Establishment of long term cultures of neural stem cells from adult sea bass, Dicentrarchus labrax

Long term cell cultures could be obtained from brains of adult sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) up to 5 days post mortem. On three different occasions, sea bass brain tissues were dissected, dispersed and cultured in Leibovitz's L-15 media supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum. The resulting cellular preparations could be passaged within 2 or 3 weeks of growth. The neural cells derived from the first trial (SBB-W1) have now been passaged over 24 times within two years. These cells have been cryopreserved and thawed successfully. SBB-W1 cells are slow growing with doubling times requiring at least 7 days at 22 °C. These long term cell cultures could be grown in suspension as neurospheres that were immunopositive for nestin, a marker for neural stem cells, or grown as adherent monolayers displaying both glial and neural morphologies. Immunostaining with anti-glial fibrillary acidic protein (a glial marker) and anti-neurofilament (a neuronal marker), yielded positive staining in most cells, suggesting their possible identity as neural stem cells. Furthermore, Sox 2, a marker for neural stem cells, could be detected from these cell extracts as well as proliferating cell nuclear antigen, a marker for proliferating cells. SBB-W1 could be transfected using pEGFP-N1 indicating their viability and suitability as convenient models for neurophysiological or neurotoxicological studies.