Research and development of an efficient method for extracting astrocytes from embryonic stem cells



Copyright © iCell Bioscience Inc, Shanghai 2018-2019

Astrocytes play an important role in the study of neurodegenerative diseases. The current extraction of astrocytes from human pluripotent stem cells is slow and inefficient.

Astrocytes, the most widely distributed cell in the mammalian brain, are also the largest of the glial cells. They stretch and fill the cell bodies of nerve cells and their processes to support, guide and separate nerve cells. It is well known that astrocytes have functions that are essential for normal brain physiology. In recent years, more and more studies have shown that astrocytes have many more important and complex functions in the brain.

Recently, researchers at Lund University in Sweden have developed a fast and efficient method to reduce the time required to extract astrocytes from embryonic stem cells from months to two weeks for the study of human stars. Glial cells offer new possibilities in health and disease.

The complexity of mouse astrocytes is different from that of human astrocytes. There are many methods for culturing astrocytes in the laboratory, but they take a long time and are extremely difficult, expensive, and complicated.

Previous methods have successfully produced human astrocytes from embryonic stem cells, but this takes several months. With our method, a large number of fully functional human astrocytes can be produced in one to two weeks. This means that it is now easier than ever to study the role of astrocytes in various diseases.

The team used the virus to activate genes in embryonic stem cells that regulate the formation of astrocytes during normal development. In this way, the researchers succeeded in rapidly forming embryonic stem cells into astrocytes. Moreover, astrocytes produced from embryonic stem cells are very similar in appearance, genetic characteristics and function to astrocytes in the adult brain.

Many researchers have previously used embryonic stem cells to generate astrocytes, but these methods attempt to mimic the normal development of embryonic stem cells in the development of astrocytes in individuals, which is time consuming and complicated.

The team demonstrated the role of this cell in the study of brain diseases by inserting a mutant gene into embryonic stem cells using CRISPR-Cas9 technology. Healthy and mutant stem cells are subsequently transformed into astrocytes using new methods.

When the researchers compared astrocytes, it was found that cells with this mutation exhibited several defects in patients previously known to have Alexandria. Using this method in combination with CRISPR-Cas9, rapid culture of human astrocytes provides a better possibility for studying the role of astrocytes in various neurological diseases.

The research team's focus is on studying age-related neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease, and the next step is to use this method to study the importance of astrocytes in these diseases.