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Current Medical Student Summer Research Fellows

·	Current Medical Student Research Fellows

Derek Chew Institution: University of Toronto Title: Defining Neural Precursor Cell-Host Interactions in Transplantation Strategies to Optimize Repair of Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury Cell-replacement therapy is thus one of the most promising new therapies for spinal cord injury. Our laboratory has had success with transplantation of adult-mouse derived neural precursor cells (NPCs) into injured spinal cord tissue in a rat subacute injury model. This has resulted in oligodendrocyte replacement and remyelination of surviving axons, as well as functional improvement across a variety of motor tests. Based on supportive literature, we hypothesize that in addition to remyelinating, transplanted NPCs have neuroprotective effects following spinal cord injury which enhance survival of endogenous oligodendrocytes. I will thus study oligodendrocyte preservation using a clinically-relevant rat clip-compression model and assess the survival of oligodendrocytes via immunohistochemistry and will employ StereoInvestigator software for unbiased stereology. Exploration of this hypothesis is of great importance to the field of spinal cord injury repair: important mechanistic insights that will be gained from this work may allow the functional recovery associated with this strategy to be optimized, and may eventually lead to clinical translation of this promising therapeutic strategy.