Transferrin effect on subventricular zone progenitor cells

LUCAS SILVESTROFF, SANDRA BARTUCCI, PAULA FRANCO, JUANA PASQUINI

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

Congreso; American Society for Neurochemistry- 41st Annual Meeting; 2010

American Society for Neurochemistry

Transferrin Effect on Subventricular Zone Progenitor Cells. The subventricular zone (SVZ) is an essential structure in the developing brain that persists through adulthood. This germinal niche is constituted by undifferentiated progenitors capable of replenishing neuronal and glial cell types. Our main interest is focused on SVZ-derived cell specification towards the oligodendroglial lineage in demyelinating diseases and its role in myelin repair. Since apotransferrin (aTf) is known to enhance oligodendrocyte maturation and SVZ cell cultures express the transferrin receptor, in the present work we used human recombinant aTf to evaluate its effect on SVZ-derived progenitor cell cultures undergoing proliferation or during differentiation. Proliferating and differentiating conditions were controlled by adding or removing epidermal growth factor and basic fibroblast growth factor from the culture media. Western blot analysis and immunocytochemistry showed that Tf treated cultures increased the mature oligodendrocyte marker, myelin basic protein (MBP), as well as the number of MBP positive cells. Furthermore, aTf supplemented culture media had no effect on cell viability by measuring mitochondrial reductase activity. We conclude that transferrin addition to culture media has a dual effect on SVZ-derived progenitor cells in vitro, since it contributes both in oligodendroglial linage specification as well as oligodendrocyte maturation. The rationale of our research is to provide a molecular target that could eventually contribute in demyelinating disease therapy.