Pro differentiation effects of gold nanoparticles in primary cultures of neural stem cells

BYRNE AGUSTIN J; MOLINARI YAMILA A.; PEREZ MARIA JULIA; GLISONI ROMINA; LAZARO MARTINEZ JUAN MANUEL; FRANCO PAULA G.

Congreso; XXXVII Reunión Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencia; 2022

In the last few years, gold nanoparticles (GNP) were shown to stimulate the differentiation of several cell types. As the development of new therapies to promote remyelination is a high priority for Multiple Sclerosis (MS), here we used neurospheres (NS) cultures to study the effects of GNP on the different mechanisms involved in brain repair.Polyethyleneimine-stabilized GNP of 55 nm of hydrodynamic diameter were synthesized and used to treat NS cultures. We found a 30% reduction in the metabolic activity of cultures by MTT assay. Although NS numbers were not affected at any dose, we detected a significant reduction in NS diameter at 10 ppm GNP, which was attributed to the downregulation of proliferation observed by BrdU incorporation assay.In addition, we found a significant inhibition of cell migration in response to GNP treatment and observed some abnormalities in cell adhesion.Finally, NS cultures undergoing cell differentiation and treated with GNP showed a marked increase in the number of mature oligodendrocytes respect to controls.All these results indicate that GNP inhibit NSC/NPC proliferation and promote cell differentiation towards the oligodendroglial lineage. These findings support the idea that GNP could be used for the development of new regenerative strategies for the CNS.