[Effect of glucose-free treatment on the neural precursor cells in vitro].

Objective: To investigate the survival, division, and differentiation of neural precursor cells (NPCs) following glucose-free treatment in vitro.
Methods: Cultured neonatal rat hippocampal NPCs were exposed to glucose-free media for 6 hours, and then were returned to regular media containing normal level glucose. At different time points after glucose-free treatment, trypan blue staining was used to determine cell viability, MTT assay to measure cell metabolic rate, 5'-bromo-deoxyuridine (BrdU) incorporation to determine the NPCs division, and immunocellulochemistry and western blot analysis to study the NPCs differentiation.
Results: (1) At different time points (0, 1, 7 d) after glucose-free treatment, NPCs viability decreased compared with NPCs control. On 0 and 1 d after glucose-free treatment, NPCs viability was higher than neurons viability. (2) On 0 and 1 d after glucose-free treatment, NPCs metabolic rates decreased significantly compared with NPCs control. On 0, 1, and 7 d after glucose-free treatment, NPCs metabolic rates were higher than that in neurons. (3) After glucose-free treatment, BrdU incorporation of NPCs was similar to NPCs control (P>0.05). (4) After glucose-free treatment, NPCs differentiation didn't change significantly (P>0.05).
Conclusion: These findings demonstrated that glucose-free treatment impaired NPC's viability, but didn't affect the division and differentiation of NPCs.