Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology
Author: Agustin Jesus Byrne | email: agusbyrne08@gmail.com
Agustin Jesus Byrne 1°, Yamila Molinari 1°, Maria Julia Perez 1°, Romina Glisoni 3°, Juan Manuel Lazaro Martinez 2°, Paula Franco 1°
1° Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Departamento de Química Biológica. IQUIFIB CONICET. Buenos Aires, Argentina
2° Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Departamento de Ciencias Químicas. IQUIMEFA CONICET. Buenos Aires, Argentina
3° Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Departamento de Tecnología Farmacéutica. NANOBIOTEC, CONICET. Buenos Aires, Argentina
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.