title: Influence of endogenous ciliary neurotrophic factor on neural differentiation of adult rat hippocampal progenitors.
abstract: Ciliary neurotrophic factor is the only known neurotrophic factor that can promote differentiation of hippocampal neural progenitor cells to glial cells and neurons in adult rats. This process is similar to spontaneous differentiation. Therefore, ciliary neurotrophic factor may be involved in spontaneous differentiation of neural stem cells. To verify this hypothesis, the present study isolated neural progenitor cells from adult male rats and cultured them in vitro. Results showed that when neural progenitor cells were cultured in the absence of mitogen fibroblast growth factor-2 or epidermal growth factor, they underwent spontaneous differentiation into neurons and glial cells. Western blot and immunocytochemical staining showed that exogenous ciliary neurotrophic factor strongly induced adult hippocampal progenitor cells to differentiate into neurons and glial cells. Moreover, passage 4 adult hippocampal progenitor cells expressed high levels of endogenous ciliary neurotrophic factor, and a neutralizing antibody against ciliary neurotrophic factor prevented the spontaneous neuronal and glial differentiation of adult hippocampal progenitor cells. These results suggest that the spontaneous differentiation of adult hippocampal progenitor cells is mediated partially by endogenous ciliary neurotrophic factor.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, Hubei Province, China ; Mental Health Center, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, Hubei Province, China.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, Hubei Province, China ; Mental Health Center, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, Hubei Province, China.
authors.forename: Zhili
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, Hubei Province, China.
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ruan
authors.affiliation: New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities, Staten Island, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities, Staten Island, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Chengxin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, Hubei Province, China.
authors.forename: Shenggang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Mental Health Center, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, Hubei Province, China.
authors.forename: Honghui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chen
keywords: ciliary neurotrophic factor; endogenous neurotrophic factors; grants-supported paper; neural progenitor cells; neural regeneration; neuroregeneration; photographs-containing paper; regeneration; spontaneous differentiation; stem cells