Figure 1

Establishment of NPC culture system in vitro. Adult hippocampal progenitors (NPCs) derived from Fisher rats were maintained under either proliferative or differentiating conditions. A. Under proliferative conditions, over 99% of cells are co-labeled with antibodies to nestin (green, cytoplasmic) and Ki67 (red, nuclear), markers of proliferating cells. B,C. Cells are exposed to proliferative conditions for 24 hrs in the presence of BrdU, followed by 5 days of differentiation conditions stain for BrdU (green), indicating that they were all initially proliferating cells. In addition, some cells in B co-label with Tuj1 (red, neuron), or RIP (blue, oligodendrocyte) and in C co-label with GFAP (blue, astrocyte). D. Immunostaining of cells derived from clonal NPCs grown under proliferative (FGF-2) or differentiating (FBS+RA) conditions yields reproducible percentages of Tuj1 (neuronal), GFAP (astrocytic), and RIP (oligodendroglial) positive cells.