Karimi et al., January, 2018. Journal of Genes and Cells, 4(2018): p, 33-39 www.imaqpress.com doi: 10.15562/gnc.64 * Correspondence: 33 Email: amin.edalatmanesh@gmail.com; nahojjat@gmail.com _________________________ www.genesandcells.com/journal Open Access Licensed as CC-BY Overexpression of Chemokine Receptors on Neural Stem Cells Pretreated with Valproic acid: Towards Improved Homing Fahime Karimi 1 , Mohammad Reza Hashemzadeh 2 , Mohammad Amin Edalatmanesh *3 , Hojjat Naderi-Meshkin 1* 1 Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Research Group, Academic Center for Education, Culture Research (ACECR), Khorasan Razavi Branch, Mashhad, Iran. 2 Department of Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine, Royesh Stem Cell Biotechnology Institute, Mashhad, Iran. 3 Department of Physiology, College of Sciences, Shiraz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz, Iran ABSTRACT Neural stem cells (NSCs) have considerable capacity for self-renewing and also ability for generating neurons in the mammalian brain. However, one of the big challenges is the migration and targeted homing of transplanted NSCs into the injured site to treat neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer´s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), multiple sclerosis (MS), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), brain ischemia (BI) and spinal cord injury (SCI). To improve homing capacity, pretreatment of NSCs with Valproic acid (VPA), which is supposed to cause diverse effects on migration ability of NSCs, is a strategy. More recently, hind brain and olfactory bulbs have been introduced as a good source of NSCs. So, NSCs were isolated from these two sources of postnatal day 1 (PND1) rats. These isolated cells were characterized by expressing neuronal markers such as Nestin and Sox2. The expression of four selected chemokine receptors (CXCR4, CXCR6, CCR1 and CCR7), which are important effectors in homing of stem cells, was investigated. It is concluded that VPA treatment enhances NSCs migration and homing showing its potential to be applied for cell-based therapies. Keywords: Neurodegenerative diseases, Cell therapy, Regenerative medicine, Neural Stem Cell, Migration, Homing, Chemokine receptors. RESEARCH ARTICLE Received 5 May 2017 Accepted 19 April 2018