High throughput analysis of neural progenitor cell proliferation in adult rodent hippocampus

Extensive efforts have been made to determine the status on neural progenitor cell proliferation in specific pathological conditions and to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of drugs for preventing neurogenic deficits in neurodegenerative diseases. However, the most commonly used stereological analysis using 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (BrdU) immuno-positive sections is a time consuming and labor intensive process and is often a bottle neck in neurogenic drug development, particularly when large sample sizes are needed. In addition, BrdU is toxic to new born neurons and also labels DNA damage in old cells. In this study, we established a method that quantitatively measures the number of Ki-67, an endogenous cell proliferation marker, positive cells by flow cytometry which analyzes extracted cell nuclei from rodent hippocampi in suspension. Our results demonstrate that this approach can be applied to a large number of rodent samples, can be accomplished in a short period of time (1-3 days), and can be completed in a more accurately objective manner than by using 3-D cell counting with immunohistochemically processed sections.