objective(s): predegeneration is a standard technique to obtain mitotically activated and enriched cultures of schwann cells (scs). this study, for the first time, evaluated the impact of various duration of predegeneration on cell yield and enrichment of scs from dog peripheral nerve. materials and methods: dog sural nerves were subjected to 5, 10, 15 day-long in vitro predegeneration. the tot...

background: spinal cord has a limited capacity to repair therefore, medical interventions are necessary for treatment of injuries. transplantation of schwann cells has shown a great promising result for spinal cord injury (sci). however, harvesting schwann cell has been limited due to donor morbidity and limited expansion capacity. furthermore, accessible sources such as bone marrow stem cells ...

Most studies of peripheral nerve myelination using culture models are performed with dorsal root ganglion neurons and Schwann cells pre-purified from the rat. The potential of this model is severely compromised by the lack of rat myelin mutants and the published protocols work poorly with mouse cells, for which numerous myelin mutants are available. This is partly due to difficulties in obtaini...

A central role for the Schwann cell cytoskeleton in the process of peripheral nerve myelination has long been suggested. However, there is no genetic or biological evidence as yet to support this assumption. Here we show that dystonia musculorum (dt) mice, which carry mutations in dystonin, a cytoskeletal crosslinker protein, have hypo/amyelinated peripheral nerves. In neonatal dt mice, Schwann...

Previously we proposed that Schwann cell development from the neural crest is a two-step process that involves the generation of one main intermediate cell type, the Schwann cell precursor. Until now Schwann cell precursors have only been identified in the rat, and much remains to be learned about these cells and how they generate Schwann cells. Here we identify this cell in the mouse and analy...

Exposing rat Schwann cells co-cultured with nerve cells to a reconstituted basement membrane induced the formation of myelin segments by Schwann cells. This occurred in a serum-free culture medium in which, in the absence of this matrix, Schwann cells proliferate but fail to differentiate. This reconstituted basement membrane was prepared from solubilized extracellular matrix proteins synthesiz...

In the vertebrate embryo, Schwann cells lining the peripheral nerves originate from the neural crest (NC), a structure that also gives rise to ganglion satellite cells, most of the neurons of the peripheral nervous system, melanocytes, and part of the cranial mesenchyme. We have studied the emergence of the Schwann cell lineage in vitro in clonal cultures of quail mesencephalic NC cells by usin...

BACKGROUND Schwann cell-like cells differentiated from adipose-derived stem cells may have an important role in peripheral nerve regeneration. Herein, we document the individual effects of growth factors in Schwann cell-like differentiation medium. METHODS There were 6 groups in the study. In the control group, we supplemented the rat adipose-derived stem cells with normal cell culture medium...

Explants of fetal rat sensory ganglia, cultured under conditions allowing axon and Schwann cell outgrowth in the absence of fibroblasts, occasionally develop nerve fascicles that are partially suspended in culture medium above the collagen substrate. In these suspended regions, fascicles are abnormal in that Schwann cells are decreased in number, are confined to occasional clusters along the fa...

Myelin-associated glycoprotein (MAG) is an integral membrane protein expressed by myelinating glial cells that occurs in two developmentally regulated forms with different carboxyterminal cytoplasmic domains (L-MAG and S-MAG). To investigate the role of MAG in myelination a recombinant retrovirus was used to introduce a MAG cDNA (L-MAG form) into primary Schwann cells in vitro. Stably infected ...