SERTOLI CELLS INDUCE THE DIFFERENTIATION OF NEURAL STEM CELLS INTO TH POSITIVE NEURONS FROM EMBRYONIC MESENCEPHALON IN RAT / 解剖学报

ABSTRACT

Objective In order to investigate the effect of nutrition and induction of Sertoli cell on cultured neural stem cells(NSCs) from embryonic mesemcephalon in the rat. Methods Sertoli cells from the testis and the neural precursors(NPs) from the ventral mesencephalon in embryonic SD rat(E13) were co-cultured.The detections of immunoreactivities of nestin,?-Ⅲ tubulin and tyrosine hydroxylase(TH) were made by immunocytochemistry after 5, 7, 10 and 14 days in vitro. Results The number of NPs with nestin-positive was decreasing along the time of the co-culture,while the ?-Ⅲ tubulin-positive cells and TH-positive cells were increasing.The number of ?-Ⅲ tubulin-positive cells was quite high at the 7th day and the TH-positive cells were at the highest level at the 10th day in vitro.At any stage,the numbers of TH-positive cells were higher in the co-culture,compared with those in the mono-culture.Conclusion The neural precursors from the ventral mesencephalon in embryonic rat can be directly induced to differentiate into the dopaminergic progenitors by co-cultured with the Sertoli cells.