ST2-Conditioned Medium Fosters Dorsal Horn Cell Excitability and Synaptic Transmission in Cultured Mouse Spinal Cord

Esri H Juárez, Chelsea Wood, Rebecca Davies, Oksana Kehoe, William E. B. Johnson, Adalberto Merighi, Francesco Ferrini

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Conditioned medium obtained from bone marrow-derived stem cells has been proposed as a novel cell-free therapy in spinal cord injury and neuropathic pain, yet the direct effect on spinal neuron function has never been investigated. Here, we adopted spinal cord organotypic cultures (SCOCs) as an experimental model to probe the effect of ST2 murine mesenchymal stem cells-conditioned medium (ST2-CM) on dorsal horn (DH) neuron functional properties. Three days of SCOC exposure to ST2-CM increased neuronal activity measured by Fos expression, as well as spontaneous or induced firing. We showed that the increase in neuronal excitability was associated with changes in both intrinsic membrane properties and an enhanced excitatory drive. The increased excitability at the single-cell level was substantiated at the network level by detecting synchronous bursts of calcium waves across DH neurons. Altogether, SCOCs represent a viable tool to probe mesenchymal cells' effect on intact neuronal networks. Our findings indicate that ST2-CM enhances neuronal activity and synaptic wiring in the spinal dorsal horn. Our data also support the trophic role of mesenchymal cells CM in maintaining network activity in spinal circuits.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2918-2928
Number of pages11
JournalStem Cell Reviews and Reports
Volume19
Issue number8
Early online date6 Sept 2023
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 6 Sept 2023

Bibliographical note

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated
otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Funder

This work was supported by the National Centre for the Replacement Refinement & Reduction of Animals in Research Crack It solution “Neuroinflammation and nociception in a dish” (https://nc3rs.org.uk/crackit/crack-it-news/new-solution-neuroinflammation-and-nociception-dish) fund.

Keywords

  • Mesenchymal stem/stromal cells
  • Dorsal horn neurons
  • Spinal cord organotypic cultures
  • Firing activity
  • Calcium imaging

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'ST2-Conditioned Medium Fosters Dorsal Horn Cell Excitability and Synaptic Transmission in Cultured Mouse Spinal Cord'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this