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| Abstract |
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During development and continuing into adulthood, stem cells function as a reservoir of undifferentiated cell types, whose
role is to support cell genesis in several tissues and organs. In the adult, they play an essential homeostatic role by replacing
differentiated cells that are lost due to physiological turnover, injury, or disease. The discovery of such cells in the adult
mammalian central nervous system (CNS), an organ traditionally thought to have little or no regenerative capacity, has opened
the door to the possibility of designing innovative regenerative therapeutics, an unexpected concept in neurobiology 15 years
ago.
In 1992, to detect precursor cells in the adult brain, we employed a serum-free culture system whereby the majority of primary
differentiated CNS cells did not survive but a small population of EGF-responsive cells were maintained in an undifferentiated
state and proliferated to form clusters, called neurospheres (Reynolds and Weiss, Science 255:1707–1710, 1992). These neurospheres
could be (a) dissociated to form numerous secondary spheres or (b) induced to differentiate, generating the three major cell
types of the CNS. This chapter outlines the adult mammalian NSC culture methodology and provides technical details of the
neurosphere assay to achieve reproducible cultures.
Affiliation(s): (3) Department of Neurosurgery, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida, Room L2-100, 100 South Newell Drive, 32611 Gainesville, FL, USA
(4) Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
(4) Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Series: Methods in Molecular Biology | Volume: 549 | Pub. Date: Jun-01-2009 | Page Range: 91-101 | DOI: 10.1007/978-1-60327-931-4_7
Subject: Cell Biology
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