Ex vivo neural stem cell expansion

In the March 1 issue of G&D, Dr. Christopher Fasano (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) and colleagues lend new mechanistic insight into the effective generation of neural stem cells outside of the neurogenic niche. Their upcoming paper demonstrates that the polycomb group protein, Bmi-1, maintains forebrain neural stem cell self-renewal. Overexpression of Bmi-1 in adult and embryonic forebrain neural progenitor cells increases stem cell self-renewal both in vitro and in vivo. They furthermore show that Bmi-1-mediated self-renewal is dependent upon repression of p21 by the forebrain-specific transcription factor, Foxg1.

Source: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory