PERSONAL DE APOYO
DE GENARO Pablo Adrian
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Role of Muller glial cells in the generation of neuroblasts and photoreceptor-like cells. Apoptosis prevention by sphingosine 1 phosphate
Autor/es:
SIMON, MV; DE GENARO, P; ABRAHAN, C; DE LOS SANTOS, B; ROTSTEIN, NP; POLITI, LE
Reunión:
Congreso; Primera Reunion Conjunta de Neurociencias; 2009
Institución organizadora:
SAN
Resumen:
Apoptosis of photoreceptors
(PR) is the main cause of blindness in retinal neurodegenerations. Since the
finding of stem cells in the retina, a promising strategy to avoid vision
impairment is to regenerate lost PR. Using
Muller glial cells (MGC), which display stem cell properties, requires
establishing how MGC might generate neuroblasts (NB), how to induce these NB to
further differentiate into mature neurons and how to avoid apoptosis of the regenerated
neurons. To investigate these issues we used pure neuronal and glial primary
and secondary cultures, and neuro-glia cocultures. NB, characterized as round, undifferentiated
cells that took up Bromodeoxyuridine and expressed Nestin and Pax6, were only preserved
in long-term primary and secondary neuro-glia cocultures, since they were
absent or rapidly disappeared in pure neuronal or pure glial cultures. NB comprised
about 63% of the total small, round cells in primary neuro-glia cocultures but
dropped to 1% in secondary cocultures; concomitantly, nearly 70% and 10% of
round cells in secondary cocultures expressed the PR markers Crx and opsin,
respectively; these cells also showed high affinity glutamate uptake, a feature
of functional PR. Apoptosis of PR-like cells increased during culture time but
addition of sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P), recently shown to prevent PR
apoptosis, decreased their death. Our results suggest that neuron-MGC
interactions might be relevant in the preservation or generation of NB and in their
further differentiation as PR, while S1P might provide a useful tool to prevent
apoptosis in newly generated PR.