Production of neurospheres from mammalian Muller cells in culture

In lower vertebrates, like fishes and amphibians, retina is able to self-regenerate whereas Mammalian retina has lost this property. Nevertheless, recently, it has turned out that retinal glial Muller cells were playing a role in neuronal regeneration of the adult rodent retina, in case of acute damages, by dedifferentiating and redifferentiating in glial and neural cells. The purpose of this study was to analyse the ability of mammalian Muller cells for forming neurospheres. First of all, rats Muller cells were isolated in a primary culture. Second, these cells were resuspended in two different culture media: the cells cultures in the Neurobasal-A medium kept a typical Muller cells morphology even after 15 days of EGF treatment, and the cells plated in the DMEM-F12 medium formed neurospheres from the third day in culture. The neurosphere cells expressed nestin, cellular retinaldehyde binding protein (CRALBP) and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP). These results showed our capacity to isolate and propagate Muller cells-derived progenitor cells. Moreover, it allows us to control the number of progenitor cells and, in the future, to study their differentiation capacity. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.