The Adult Spinal Cord Contains Multipotent Neural Stem Cells

Shihabuddin, L., P.J. Horner, J. Ray and F.H.Gage. 2000. Adult spinal cord stem cells differentiate into granular neurons in the adult rat hippocampus. J.Neurosci. 20(23):8727-8735.

Dissociated cells from the adult spinal cord exhibit stem cell characteristics in vitro. We isolated cells from the adult spinal cord by enzymatic digestion and separating cell populations based on density. Cells were placed in a serum-free neural basal medium containing fibroblast growth factor. The experiment was designed to determine if isolated cells had the main properties of neural stem cells; 1) self renewal and 2) the capacity to differentiate into all neural cell subtypes (multipotency). We used a retrovirus to create a molecular tag that could be used to determine clonality of expanded cultures (A&B). In the clone above, upon growth factor withdrawal, cells differentiated into astrocytes, neurons and oligodendrocytes, thus exhibiting multipotency (D-G). In the future we will work to determine the factors that regulate these fate choices and how the brain itself regulates this process.