MilliTrace™ Constitutive GFP Reporter Neural Stem Cell Lines

Millipore Corporation, a Life Science leader providing technologies, tools and services for bioscience research and biopharmaceutical manufacturing, today announced the availability of their MilliTrace primary rodent neural stem cell (NSC) lines that express green fluorescent protein (GFP) constitutively. GFP expression in these stem cells is the best way for researchers to monitor the behavior of specific populations of cells as they proliferate, migrate, and differentiate into various cell lineages, depending on developmental context. The MilliTrace cell lines are the first commercially available, GFP-expressing, karyotypically normal stem cell lines, and are supplied with optimized expansion medium.

Many immortal cell lines display unstable or aneuploid chromosomes; however, for stem cell lines to yield physiologically relevant results, it is important that the cells display normal chromosomes. Unlike human NSC cultures, rodent NSCs undergo prolonged self-renewal in culture without losing chromosomal stability. Researchers at Millipore have been able to isolate and propagate monolayer cultures of NSCs from two different regions of the rodent brain: the adult rat hippocampus and the embryonic mouse cortex. Even after introduction of constitutively expressing GFP, the NSCs from these tissues show normal karyotype, stability over more than 10 passages, and multipotency. Both cell lines can be readily differentiated into neurons, astrocytes, or oligodendrocytes, using appropriate cues.

Validated for high levels of GFP expression, stem cell marker expression, and multipotency, MilliTrace GFP Reporter Neural Stem Cell Lines can improve reproducibility and data quality for a variety of applications. Researchers can use MilliTrace cell lines to study cell-cell interactions in co-culture studies or contribution of NSCs to the stem cell niche in vivo. MilliTrace cell lines also enable high-throughput screens to discover agents that affect stem cell maintenance and differentiation.