Specific accumulation of 18F-deoxyglucose in three-dimensional long-term cultures of human and rodent brain tissue.
OBJECTIVE
Organotypic slice cultures (OSC) of human brain specimens represent an intriguing experimental model for translational studies addressing, e.g., stem cell transplantation in neurodegenerative diseases or targeting invasion by malignant glioma ex vivo. However, long-term viability and phenomena of structural reorganization of human OSC remain to be further characterized. Here, we report the use of (18)F-deoxyglucose (FDG) for evaluating the viability of brain slice preparations obtained either from postnatal rats or human hippocampal specimens.


METHODS
Anatomically well preserved human hippocampi obtained from epilepsy surgery and rat hippocampus slice cultures obtained from six day old Wistar rats were dissected into horizontal slices. The slices were incubated with FDG in phosphate buffered saline up to 1 h, either with or without supplementation of glucose at a concentration of 2.5 mg/ml. Radioactivity within the medium or slice cultures was measured using a gamma-counter. In addition, distribution of radioactivity was autoradiographically visualized and quantified as counts per mm(2).


RESULTS
In rat hippocampal slices, FDG accumulated with 1 300 000 +/- 68 000 counts/mm(2), whereas the incorporation of the radioactive label in human slices was in the order of 1 500 000 +/- 370 000 counts/mm(2). The elevation of glucose concentration within the medium led to a significant three-fold decrease of FDG accumulation in rat slices and to a 2.4-fold decrease in human specimens.


CONCLUSIONS
FDG accumulated in organotypic brain cultures of human or rodent origin. FDG is thus suited to investigate the viability of OSC. Furthermore, these preparations open new ways to study the factors governing cerebral FDG uptake in brain tissue ex vivo.
Hocke
C
C
Clinic of Nuclear Medicine, Krankenhausstrasse 12, 91054 Erlangen. carsten.hocke@nuklear.imed.uni-erlangen.de
Blümcke
I
I
Romstöck
J
J
Prante
O
O
Stefan
H
H
Kuwert
T
T
Jeske
I
I
D000818:Animals; D001345:Autoradiography; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18 / Q000493:pharmacokinetics*; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000166:cytology / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D006801:Humans; D007700:Kinetics; D051379:Mice; D009924:Organ Culture Techniques; D011877:Radionuclide Imaging; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals / Q000493:pharmacokinetics; D051381:Rats
D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18