16 Mar Research Suggests Neural Stem Cells Have Brief LIves
MedicalResearch.com Interview with Filippo Calzolari PhD
Institute of Stem Cell Research, ISF-N
Helmholtz Zentrum München
Neuherberg Germany
MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Calzolari: Despite their amazing complexity, life-long production of new neurons occurs in only a few well-circumscribed areas in adult mammalian brains, thanks to the activity of adult Neural Stem Cells (NSCs). How Neural Stem Cells in these regions maintain neuronal production throughout life is however poorly understood, due in part to the difficulty of assessing the behavior of single stem cells, in vivo.
Our work now partially fills this gap, by providing a description of how single Neural Stem Cells of the mouse subependymal zone (SEZ) generate new neurons destined to the olfactory bulb (OB).
In the SEZ, only a small proportion of Neural Stem Cells are active at any given time, and single stem cells sustain neurogenesis in a rather “bursty” manner, often generating more than a hundred immature neurons within a few weeks. Given such dynamism, it came as a surprise to note that most NSCs became exhausted after a few weeks of starting their activity, thus failing to show a crucial hallmark of “stemness”, i.e. the ability to extensively self-renew. Interestingly, each Neural Stem Cell mostly produced only one of the various subtypes of neurons that make up the adult-generated olfactory bulb neuronal population. These new data thus indicate that both long-term adult neuron generation and the production of a diverse set of neurons are the cumulative result of a population of individually short-lived and subtype-restricted “stem cells”.
MedicalResearch: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report?
Dr. Calzolari: Ours is a rather basic description of a biological process, and it is therefore “risky” to come up with catchy messages for clinicians and patients alike. However, a notion that should stick is that aging may be associated with the progressive loss, rather than drift to quiescence, of neural stem cells. Therefore, trying to preserve stem cell numbers over time may be a useful preventive strategy, should any late regenerative response need to be elicited. It´s clear however that a lot needs to be figured out in order to safely attempt such a strategy.
MedicalResearch: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?
Dr. Calzolari: A crucial step will be to figure out the molecular basis for the rather brief nature of neural stem cells activity. Can neuron production from a single NSC be prolonged safely?
Maybe even more crucial, it will be to find out how much our observations apply to humans. Are our Neural Stem Cells as short-lived as mouse ones?
Citation:
& Jovica Ninkovic Nature Neuroscience (2015)
MedicalResearch.com Interview with Filippo Calzolari PhD (2015). Research Suggests Neural Stem Cells Have Brief LIves
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Last Updated on March 16, 2015 by Marie Benz MD FAAD