Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022:2389:125-154.
doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-1783-0_12.

Identifying Neural Progenitor Cells in the Adult Human Brain

Thomas I H Park  1   2 , Henry J Waldvogel  2   3 , Johanna M Montgomery  2   4 , Edward W Mee  2   5 , Peter S Bergin  2   6 , Richard L M Faull  2   3 , Mike Dragunow  1   2 , Maurice A Curtis  7   8
Affiliations

Identifying Neural Progenitor Cells in the Adult Human Brain

Thomas I H Park et al. Methods Mol Biol. 2022.

Abstract

The discovery, in 1998, that the adult human brain contains at least two populations of progenitor cells and that progenitor cells are upregulated in response to a range of degenerative brain diseases has raised hopes for their use in replacing dying brain cells. Since these early findings, the race has been on to understand the biology of progenitor cells in the human brain, and they have now been isolated and studied in many major neurodegenerative diseases. Before these cells can be exploited for cell replacement purposes, it is important to understand how to (1) locate them, (2) label them, (3) determine what receptors they express, (4) isolate them, and (5) examine their electrophysiological properties when differentiated. In this chapter we have described the methods we use for studying progenitor cells in the adult human brain and in particular the tissue processing, immunohistochemistry, autoradiography, progenitor cell culture, and electrophysiology on brain cells. The Neurological Foundation of New Zealand Human Brain Bank has been receiving human tissue for approximately 25 years during which time we have developed a number of unique ways to examine and isolate progenitor cells from resected surgical specimens as well as from postmortem brain tissue. There are ethical and technical considerations that are unique to working with human brain tissue, and these, as well as the processing of this tissue and the culturing of it for the purpose of studying progenitor cells, are the topic of this chapter.

Keywords: Brain bank; Human brain; Neural progenitor cell; Neurosphere.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Globus JH, Kuhlenbeck H (1944) The subependymal cell plate (matrix) and its relationship to brain tumors of the ependymal type. J Neuropathol Exp Neurol 3:1–35 - DOI
    1. Eriksson PS et al (1998) Neurogenesis in the adult human hippocampus. Nat Med 4:1313–1317 - DOI
    1. Reynolds BA, Weiss S (1992) Generation of neurons and astrocytes from isolated cells of the adult mammalian central nervous system. Science 255:1707–1710 - DOI
    1. Louis SA et al (2008) Enumeration of neural stem and progenitor cells in the neural colony- forming cell assay. Stem Cells 26:988–996 - DOI
    1. Reynolds BA, Rietze RL (2005) Neural stem cells and neurospheres-re-evaluating the relationship. Nat Methods 2:333–336 - DOI

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources