Summary
The relatively recent discovery of persistent adult neurogenesis has led to the experimental isolation and characterization of central nervous system neural stem cell populations. Protocols for in vitro analysis and expansion of neural stem cells are crucial for understanding their properties and defining characteristics. The methods described here allow for cell and molecular analysis of individual clones of cells—neurospheres—derived from neural stem/progenitor cells. Neurospheres can be cultivated from a variety of normal, genetically altered, or pathological tissue specimens, even with protracted postmortem intervals, for studies of mechanisms underlying neurogenesis, cell fate decisions, and cell differentiation. Neurosphere-forming cells hold great promise for the development of cell and molecular therapeutics for a variety of neurological diseases.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke grants NS37556 and HL70143 (to D.A.S.) and NS056019 (to E.D.L.).
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© 2008 Humana Press, a part of Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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Marshall, G.P., Ross, H.H., Suslov, O., Zheng, T., Steindler, D.A., Laywell, E.D. (2008). Production of Neurospheres from CNS Tissue. In: Weiner, L.P. (eds) Neural Stem Cells. Methods in Molecular Biology™, vol 438. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-133-8_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-133-8_12
Publisher Name: Humana Press
Print ISBN: 978-1-58829-846-1
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