Detection of neurocan in cerebrospinal fluid

Cerebrospinal fluid (CFS) is the most easily accessible component of the human central nervous system and has been successfully used for the analysis of disease-associated molecular imbalances, particularly for extracellular matrix components. Alterations in the presence of the nervous system-associated chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan neurocan had been reported from active multiple sclerosis lesions. Neurocan could be detected as a component of human CFS after enrichment of proteoglycans by anion exchange chromatography from pooled liquor as well as individual 300 μL samples by Western blot. However, a general alteration in neurocan levels in CFS sample with high immunoglobulin content could not be demonstrated. To further reduce the sample size, the development of a PG capturing assay based on polybrene-coated 96-well plates was initiated. This approach could be an interesting alternative option for the analysis of PGs in biological fluid and tissue samples.