#neurosphere

[posthumanwanderings]

[bpod-bpod]

Spine-saving Spheres

Cut your hair or scratch your skin and they regrow. Not so with nerves within your spine – they don't regrow after injury. However, neural stem cells have shown promise for treating spinal injuries in mouse models. Translating these results to humans is more challenging and it's thought that the material in which neural stem cells are grafted is important. Collagen scaffolds are already used to encourage regrowth of other tissues in humans and so researchers grafted neural stem cells into mice following spinal injury using a similar approach. They tested collagen scaffolds akin to those used to help regrow skin and nerves outside the spine. Both supported neural stem cells growing in number to form clusters called neurospheres, as captured using scanning electron microscopy (pictured). The neurospheres went on to form functioning nerves that restored movement in treated mice to levels equivalent to normal mice, bringing hope for treating human spinal injuries.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Image from work by Alexandra Kourgiantaki, Dimitrios S. Tzeranis and Kanelina Karali, and colleagues

Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in npj Regenerative Medicine, June 2020

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[bpod-bpod]

In the Matrix

In cancer, both the makeup of the tumour itself and its environment, including neighbouring cells and the extracellular matrix, the surrounding network of proteins and fibres, are important in determining how the disease progresses. For glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a devastating form of brain cancer characterised by highly invasive glioblastoma initiating cells (GICs), the extracellular matrix is especially important for understanding how these cells spread so rapidly through the brain. Traditional cell cultures can’t provide a realistic model of how GICs behave, so researchers have recently developed a sophisticated 3D network of synthetic fibres on which GICs can be implanted, to better study how they move and spread: pictured is a neurosphere, a cluster of neural stem cells, embedding into this artificial network. This system could help scientists learn more about how GICs migrate, and eventually provide a better system in which to screen potential drugs targeting this process in GBM.

Today marks the start of International Brain Tumour Awareness Week

Written by Emmanuelle Briolat

Image from work by Ali Saleh and Emilie Marhuenda, and colleagues

Institut des Neurosciences de Montpellier, INM, U-1051, Univ. Montpellier, CHU de Montpellier, ENSCM, INSERM, Montpellier, France

Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)

Published in Scientific Reports, October 2019

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[mucholderthen]

Neurosphere culture by Studio Jonas Coersmeier on Flickr.

Fluorescent light micrograph of a group of neural stem cells in culture.

The stem cells are differentiating into neurons (red) and nerve support cells (green), which are then migrating out of the neurosphere.

Cell nuclei are dyed blue.

Intermediate filaments are green.

Beta-tubulin III, one of the proteins that make up microtubules, is red.

Intermediate filaments and microtubules are part of the cell’s cytoskeleton, responsible for intracellular transport, cell structure and motility.

September 11, 2012

[mucholderthen]

Primary rat neurons grown as neurospheres Observed by Dr. Rowan Orme Keele University, Keele, UK

(Nikon Small World 2011)

[currentsinbiology]

Human Spinal Cord Neurosphere

Mr. Micheal Weible

University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Technique: Widefield Illumination and Deconvolution

[byuneuro]

Image: This #neurosphere (bottom left) was prepared from neural stem cells extracted from an embryonic rat midbrain. After allowing the cells to proliferate and expand for 7 days, they were imaged with confocal #microscopy. Cells differentiated to neurons are labeled red with an antibody to βIII-tubulin, whereas astrocytes are labeled green with an antibody to glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), an intermediate filament specific to astrocytes. All nuclei are stained blue with bisbenzamide. When cultured with growth factors in vitro, neural #stemcells can generate neurons (red), as well as the cells that support them— astrocytes (green) and #oligodendrocytes. In culture, neural stem cells group together in ball-like clusters, called neurospheres (bottom left). Neurospheres are of great therapeutic interest because they have the potential to regenerate and replace neurons lost in traumatic brain injury and neurodegenerative diseases, such as #Parkinsons disease, #Alzheimers disease, and multiple sclerosis (#MS). #byu #neuroscience

[1stprototype]

NEUROSPHERE - Last Man Standing

Badass theme to the really fun Doom 3 mod, Last Man Standing.