Erlandsson, et al. (2001). Immature neurons from CNS stem cells proliferate in response to platelet-derived growth facto

[Wise Young]

• Erlandsson A, Enarsson M and Forsberg-Nilsson K (2001). Immature neurons from CNS stem cells proliferate in response to platelet-derived growth factor. J Neurosci. 21 (10): 3483-91. Summary: Identifying external signals involved in the regulation of neural stem cell proliferation and differentiation is fundamental to the understanding of CNS development. In this study we show that platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) can act as a mitogen for neural precursor cells. Multipotent stem cells from developing CNS can be maintained in a proliferative state under serum-free conditions in the presence of fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF2) and induced to differentiate into neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes on withdrawal of the mitogen. PDGF has been suggested to play a role during the differentiation into neurons. We have investigated the effect of PDGF on cultured stem cells from embryonic rat cortex. The PDGF alpha-receptor is constantly expressed during differentiation of neural stem cells but is phosphorylated only after PDGF-AA treatment. In contrast, the PDGF beta-receptor is hardly detectable in uncommitted cells, but its expression increases during differentiation. We show that PDGF stimulation leads to c-fos induction, 5'-bromo-2'deoxyuridine incorporation, and an increase in the number of immature cells stained with antibodies to neuronal markers. Our findings suggest that PDGF acts as a mitogen in the early phase of stem cell differentiation to expand the pool of immature neurons. <http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/21/10/3483
http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/21/10/3483
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Citation&list_uids=11331377> Department of Genetics and Pathology, Rudbeck Laboratory, Uppsala University, SE-751 85 Uppsala, Sweden.