Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology - Volume 8, Issue 3, 2007

In 1913, Santiago Ramon Y Cajal, one of the fathers of neuroscience and a Nobel prize laureate, wrote “... the functional specialization of the brain imposes on the neurons two great lacunae; proliferation inability and irreversibility of intraprotoplasmic differentiation. It is for this reason that, once the development was ended, the founts of growth and regeneration of axons and dendrites dried up irrevocably. In adult centers, t Read More

Since the discovery of endogenous progenitor cells in two brain regions in the adult, the notion that progenitor cells might be useful for repairing damaged neurons or replacing dead neurons has gone from fiction to a reality, at least in the laboratory setting. Progenitor cells have the unique ability to be able to produce new neurons in response to endogenous and exogenous cues from their microenvironment in the brain and Read More

Bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) is widely used for labeling dividing cells to determine their fate. In particular, the analysis of neurogenesis in the adult mammalian brain has made significant progress through the use of this technique. However; when using BrdU for labeling, there are several issues to consider in order to minimalize possible cytotoxicity or false-positive labeling. This current review summarizes methodological and tec Read More

Fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) in the field of stem cell biology has become an indispensable tool for defining and separating rare cell populations with a high degree of purity. Steady progress has been made in this regard, but the intrinsic lability of the stem cell phenotype presents a different challenge and there are many technical caveats. FACS remains, however, the technology of choice for reporting and charact Read More

Since their initial description in 1992, neurospheres have appeared in some aspect of more than a thousand published studies. Despite their ubiquitous presence in the scientific literature, there is little consensus regarding the fundamental defining characteristics of neurospheres; thus, there is little agreement about what, if anything, the neurosphere assay can tell us about the relative abundance or behavior of neural s Read More

One of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century is that the mammalian brain can give rise to new neurons throughout the lifespan. The phenomenon of adult neurogenesis raises hopes of harnessing neural stem cell for brain repair, and has sparked interest in novel roles for these new neurons, such as olfaction, spatial memory, and even regulation of mood. Traditionally, studies on adult neurogenesis have relied o Read More

Stem cells represent the key to tissue genesis, regeneration, and turnover. This notion has spawned the concept of regenerative medicine, or stem cell based therapies to supplement degenerating or damaged tissues. However, stem cells may also represent a preferential target of carcinogens. The unique ability of stem cells to self-renew and to differentiate into multiple phenotypes implies that all stem cells share a common tra Read More

One of the most surprising aspects of neural development is that cells do not remain in their birthplace but actively migrate along a variety of routes to their final destinations. This review traces past, present, and future techniques used to analyze progenitor cell migration in the brain, and also discusses their relevant strengths and weaknesses. The large majority of information regarding cell migration is from studies where Read More

Mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE) is a neurological condition characterized by the occurrence of spontaneous recurrent seizures originating from mesial structures involving the hippocampus within the temporal lobe. This condition is often associated with pathological features in the hippocampus such as neuronal cell loss, widening of the granule cell layer, astrogliosis and mossy fibre spouting. At present, the mecha Read More