McLean Hospital

6 articles published in JoVE

• Neuroscience

  
  Derivation, Expansion, Cryopreservation and Characterization of Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cells from Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Sovannarath Pong^1,2,3, Paulo Lizano^1,2,3,4, Rakesh Karmacharya^{1,3,4,5 1}Center for Genomic Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, ²Department of Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, ³Chemical Biology and Therapeutic Science Program, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, ⁴Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, ⁵Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Program, McLean Hospital This protocol details an adapted method to derive, expand, and cryopreserve brain microvascular endothelial cells obtained by differentiating human induced pluripotent stem cells, and to study blood brain barrier properties in an ex vivo model.

• Neuroscience

  
  Migration, Chemo-Attraction, and Co-Culture Assays for Human Stem Cell-Derived Endothelial Cells and GABAergic Neurons Debkanya Datta^1,2, Anju Vasudevan^{1,2 1}Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, ²Angiogenesis and Brain Development Laboratory, Division of Basic Neuroscience, McLean Hospital We present three simple in vitro assays-the long-distance migration assay, the co-culture migration assay, and chemo-attraction assay-that collectively evaluate the functions of human stem cell derived periventricular endothelial cells and their interaction with GABAergic interneurons.

• Biology

  
  Production of Nurr-1 Specific Polyclonal Antibodies Free of Cross-reactivity Against Its Close Homologs, Nor1 and Nur77 Pierre Leblanc¹, Minho Moon^1,2, Woori Kim¹, Inhye Jeong¹, Chun-Hyung Kim¹, Kwang-Soo Kim^{1 1}Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory, Psychiatry, McLean Hospital, ²Department of Biochemistry, College of Medicine, Konyang University Here, we selectively target antibodies against a specific member of a highly conserved family of proteins by immunizing animals with their most divergent regions followed by removing cross reactive antibodies by pre-adsorption.

• Neuroscience

  
  Methods for Studying the Mechanisms of Action of Antipsychotic Drugs in Caenorhabditis elegans Limin Hao^1,2, Edgar A. Buttner^{1,2 1}Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, ²Mailman Research Center, McLean Hospital Approaches for testing the effects of antipsychotic drugs (APDs) in Caenorhabditis elegans are demonstrated. Assays are described for testing drug effects on development and viability and on pharyngeal pumping rate. These methods are also applicable for pharmacogenetic experiments with drug classes other than APDs.

• Neuroscience

  
  Isolation and Culture of Endothelial Cells from the Embryonic Forebrain Peeyush Kumar T.^1,2, Anju Vasudevan^{1,2 1}Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, ²Angiogenesis and Brain Development Laboratory, Division of Basic Neuroscience, McLean Hospital This video demonstrates an easy and reliable strategy for preparation of pure cultures of endothelial cells from the embryonic forebrain within 10-12 days and will be useful for research focused on many aspects of cerebral angiogenesis.

• Biology

  
  Obtaining High Quality RNA from Single Cell Populations in Human Postmortem Brain Tissue Charmaine Y. Pietersen¹, Maribel P. Lim¹, Tsung-Ung W. Woo^{1,2,3 1}Department of Structural and Molecular Neuroscience, McLean Hospital, ²Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, ³Department of Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center We describe a process using laser-capture microdissection to isolate and extract RNA from a homogeneous cell population, pyramidal neurons, in layer III of the superior temporal gyrus in postmortem human brains. We subsequently linearly amplify (T7-based) mRNA, and hybridize the sample to the Affymetrix human X3P microarray.