impact of intraventricular human adipose-derived stem cells transplantation with pregnenolone treatment on remyelination of corpus callosum in a rat model of multiple sclerosis

Objective: multiple sclerosis (ms) is known as a nerve tissue disorder, which causes demyelination of central nervous system (cns) fibers. cell-based treatment is a novel strategy for the treatment of demyelinating diseases such asms. adipose-derived stem cells (adscs) have neuroprotective and neuroregenerative effects and pregnenolone as a neurosteroid has remarkable roles in neurogenesis. we intend to examine the impact of intraventricular transplantation of human adscs and systemic injection of pregnenolone on the emyelination of a rat model cuprizone-induceddemyelination.materials and methods: this experimental study was performed on 36 male wistar rats that received a regular diet and a cuprizone diet for 3 weeks for m.s. induction. through lipoaspirate surgery, human-adscs (hadscs) wereobtained from a patient. six groups of rats (n=6): healthy, ms, sham, pregnenolone injection, adscs transplantation, and pregnenolone injection/adscs transplantation were included in this study. for assessment of remyelination, transmission electron microscopy (tem), immunohistochemistry staining, real-time reverse transcription-polymerasechain reaction (rt-pcr), and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (elisa) were performed.results: tem outcomes revealed an increase in the thickness of the fibers myelin in the treatment groups (p<0.05). we also observed a significant upregulation of mbp, pdgfr-α, and mog after treatment with hadscs and pregnenolone compared to other study groups (p<0.001). these results were confirmed by immunostaining analysis. moreover, therewas no significant difference between the adscs/pregnenolone group and the control group regarding the level of mbp, a2b5, and mog proteins in elisa.conclusion: our data implied that the remyelination and cell recovery were more improved by intraventricular adscs transplantation and pregnenolone injection after inducing a rat model of ms.