Isolation and Culture of Neurospheres for the Study of Pathogenesis of Prion Disease

Neurosphere contains neural stem cells that are capable of self-renewal and multilineage differentiation including neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes (Gage, 2000). Cell culture model using differentiated neurosphere cultures are suggested to be a valuable tool for studying the pathogenesis of prion disease at the cellular level (Iwamaru et al., 2013). This protocol describes the procedure for a culture of whole brain-derived neurospheres from newborn mouse brains. Neurosphere formation steadily occurs within a week from the cultures of neonatal whole brains and these cells have stem cell properties.