Hypoxic Preconditioning of Marrow-derived Progenitor Cells As a Source for the Generation of Mature Schwann Cells

The overall goal of this cell culture technique is to enrich for bone marrow neural progenitors to facilitate their differentiation into functional Schwann cells. This method addresses a key issue in stem cell and regenerative medicine:how to use a limited source of neuroprogenitors to generate glia to assist in post-traumatic axonal regrowth and remyelination. An advantage of this technique is the use of efficient culture conditioning to facilitate neural cell expansion from bone marrow stromal cells for their use in autologous cell therapy.

After two days in culture, remove 75%of the spent medium and the non-adherent cells and rinse the adherent cells with three 10 millimeter PBS washes. After the third wash, replace the PBS with 10 milliliters of marrow stomal cells, or MSC, growth medium and return the culture to the incubator. Visible colonies should appear by day six to seven.