ArticleCells2022
Effect of 3D Synthetic Microscaffold Nichoid on the Morphology of Cultured Hippocampal Neurons and Astrocytes.
Article in Cells, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed, 2 citations in OpenAlex.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors at 6 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The human brain is the most complex organ in biology. This complexity is due to the number and the intricate connections of brain cells and has so far limited the development of in vitro models for basic and applied brain research. We decided to create a new, reliable, and cost-effective in vitro system based on the Nichoid, a 3D microscaffold microfabricated by two-photon laser polymerization technology. We investigated whether these 3D microscaffold devices can create an environment allowing the manipulation, monitoring, and functional assessment of a mixed population of brain cells in vitro. With this aim, we set up a new model of hippocampal neurons and astrocytes co-cultured in the Nichoid microscaffold to generate brain micro-tissues of 30 μm thickness. After 21 days in culture, we morphologically characterized the 3D spatial organization of the hippocampal astrocytes and neurons within the microscaffold, and we compared our observations to those made using the classical 2D co-culture system. We found that the co-cultured cells colonized the entire volume of the 3D devices. Using confocal microscopy, we observed that within this period the different cell types had become well-differentiated. This was further elaborated with the use of drebrin, PSD-95, and synaptophysin antibodies that labeled the majority of neurons, both in the 2D as well as in the 3D co-cultures. Using scanning electron microscopy, we found that neurons in the 3D co-culture displayed a significantly larger amount of dendritic protrusions compared to neurons in the 2D co-culture. This latter observation indicates that neurons growing in a 3D environment may be more prone to form connections than those co-cultured in a 2D condition. Our results show that the Nichoid can be used as a 3D device to investigate the structure and morphology of neurons and astrocytes in vitro. In the future, this model can be used as a tool to study brain cell interactions in the discovery of important mechanisms governing neuronal plasticity and to determine the factors that form the basis of different human brain diseases. This system may potentially be further used for drug screening in the context of various brain diseases.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.