Adipocytes derived from PA6 cells reliably promote the differentiation of dopaminergic neurons from human embryonic stem cells

Safranal-promoted differentiation and survival of dopaminergic neurons in an animal model of Parkinson's disease

CONTEXT

Safranal (SAF) is verified to have potential effects in promoting nerve growth.

OBJECTIVES

This study verifies the role of SAF in promoting dopaminergic neurons growth in vitro and in vivo.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

Rat neural stem cells (NSC) were treated with 1, 20, or 100 ng/mL of SAF, and the expression levels of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) and dopamine transporter (DAT) were assayed by flow cytometry and real-time PCR and the secretion of dopamine (DA) was assayed by ELISA. Then, 2 × 10⁶ cells of SAF-treated NSC was administrated into PD rat models induced by 6-OHDA. The differentiation and survival of dopaminergic neurons was identified by fluorescence microscope and TH⁺ cells by immunostaining and DA secretion by ELISA at week 2 and week 4, respectively.

RESULTS

After being treated with SAF at 20 and 100 ng/mL for 1 week, TH and DAT positive rates increased 1.4- and 1.7-fold (p < 0.01, respectively). TH and DAT mRNA also increased 8.05- and 4.41-fold, respectively. And the release of DA statistically increased 1.5-fold (p < 0.01). In vivo, the number of rotations decreased to 4.33 ± 0.97 rpm (p < 0.01) and the survival rates increased to 77.66 ± 7.87% (p < 0.05) at week 4 after transplantation of SAF-treated NSC. Moreover, the transplanted cells increased three-fold, TH fluorescence density increased four-fold and DA releases increased 1.4-fold (p < 0.01) at week 4 after transplantation.

CONCLUSIONS

SAF promoted the production of functional DA cells and alleviated PD, which may contribute to a new therapy for PD patients.

PA6 Stromal Cell Co-Culture Enhances SH-SY5Y and VSC4.1 Neuroblastoma Differentiation to Mature Phenotypes

Neuroblastoma cell lines such as SH-SY5Y have been used for modelling neurodegenerative diseases and for studying basic mechanisms in neuroscience. Since neuroblastoma cells proliferate and generally do not express markers of mature or functional neurons, we exploited a co-culture system with the stromal cell line PA6 to better induce differentiation to a more physiologically relevant status. We found that co-culture of the neuroblastoma cell lines in the presence of neural inducers such retinoic acid was able to generate a high proportion of quiescent neurons with very long neurites expressing differentiation markers. The co-culture system additionally cuts short the time taken to produce a more mature phenotype. We also show the application of this system to study proteins implicated in motor neuron disease.

Dopaminergic Differentiation of Human Embryonic Stem Cells on PA6-Derived Adipocytes

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are a promising source for cell replacement therapies. Parkinson's disease is one of the candidate diseases for the cell replacement therapy since the motor manifestations of the disease are associated with the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta. Stromal cell-derived inducing activity (SDIA) is the most commonly used method for the dopaminergic differentiation of hESCs. This chapter describes a simple, reliable, and scalable dopaminergic induction method of hESCs using PA6-derived adipocytes. Coculturing hESCs with PA6-derived adipocytes markedly reduces the variable outcomes among experiments. Moreover, the colony differentiation step of this method can also be used for the dopaminergic induction of mouse embryonic stem cells and NTERA2 cells as well.