Establishment of an in vitro aging system of non-dividing cells

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24650200
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Neurochemistry/Neuropharmacology
• Research Institution: Nagasaki University
• Principal Investigator: MORI Nozomu 長崎大学, 医歯薬学総合研究科(医学系), 教授 (00130394)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 老化 / 神経細胞 / 細胞培養 / ニューロン / 寿命遺伝子 / 神経変性 / 蛋白質凝集 / 寿命

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In a carefully maintained conventional serum-free culture medium, primary cultured rat hippocampal neurons could survive over 5~6 months (M), and significant portion of those neurons could remain nearly one year in the regular culture dishes. In this long term in vitro culture system, neurons initially proliferate, mature, then start to show evidence of senescence after a period of synaptic and/or neuronal elimination, and subsequently leading to the stage of neuronal loss or death, which could be arbitrarily divided into five consecutive phases; the growing phase I (~1M), the maturation phase II (1~2M), the early aging phase III (3~6M), the late aging (or middle senescence) phase IV (7~9M), and the late senescence phase V (10M and over). Even in the senescent phases, some neuronal dendrites retained spines containing postsynaptic components. We propose that this system could be a useful model for the study of non-replicative post-mitotic neuronal cell senescence.

Free Research Field

分子神経老年学