Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Marcoleta 391, Santiago, Chile.
J Neurosci Methods. 2011 Oct 30;202(1):65-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2011.08.027. Epub 2011 Aug 25.
Microglial cells' phenotype and function change with aging. Since microglial cell impairments that are relevant for neurodegenerative diseases appear to be unique to aged individuals, it is important to assess function of aged microglia. However, most studies are done with microglia from neonates, mostly due to lack of reliable protocols to obtain microglia from adult animals. Here, we present a conditioned media-dependent culture system that promotes proliferation of adult microglia. We observed that inflammatory activation was increasingly oxidative in microglia from aged animals. Also, whereas phagocytosis of Aβ by microglia from adult animals was more robust than that of microglia from neonates, the induction of phagocytosis by TGFβ was abolished in aged animals. Our results show the importance of using adult animals cells for the study of neurodegenerative processes or other diseases associated with aging. The proposed culture method is inexpensive and cell yield allows for their assessment by functional bioassays and biochemistry.
小胶质细胞的表型和功能随衰老而变化。由于与神经退行性疾病相关的小胶质细胞损伤似乎是老年人所特有的，因此评估衰老的小胶质细胞的功能非常重要。然而，由于缺乏从成年动物获得小胶质细胞的可靠方案，大多数研究都是用新生儿的小胶质细胞进行的。在这里，我们提出了一种条件培养基依赖的培养系统，该系统可促进成年小胶质细胞的增殖。我们观察到，来自老年动物的小胶质细胞的炎症激活越来越具有氧化性。此外，尽管来自成年动物的小胶质细胞对 Aβ的吞噬作用比来自新生儿的小胶质细胞更强，但 TGFβ诱导的吞噬作用在老年动物中被消除。我们的研究结果表明，使用成年动物细胞来研究神经退行性过程或与衰老相关的其他疾病非常重要。所提出的培养方法成本低廉，细胞产量允许通过功能生物测定和生物化学进行评估。
