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Papers of the Week


Papers: 20 Mar 2021 - 26 Mar 2021


Animal Studies


2021 Mar 16


Biochem Pharmacol

Usefulness of the measurement of neurite outgrowth of primary sensory neurons to study cancer-related painful complications.

Authors

Park SH, Eber MR, das Dores M Fonseca M, Patel CM, Cunnane KA, Ding H, Hsu F-C, Peters CM, Ko M-C, Strowd RE, Wilson JA, Hsu W, Alfonso Romero-Sandoval E, Shiozawa Y
Biochem Pharmacol. 2021 Mar 16:114520.
PMID: 33741328.

Abstract

Abnormal outgrowth of sensory nerves is one of the important contributors to pain associated with cancer and its treatments. Primary neuronal cultures derived from dorsal root ganglia (DRG) have been widely used to study pain-associated signal transduction and electrical activity of sensory nerves. However, there are only a few studies using primary DRG neuronal culture to investigate neurite outgrowth alterations due to the underlying cancer-related factors and chemotherapeutic agents. In this study, primary DRG sensory neurons derived from mouse, non-human primate, and human were established in serum and growth factor-free condition. A bovine serum albumin gradient centrifugation method improved the separation of sensory neurons from satellite cells. The purified DRG neurons were able to maintain their heterogeneous subpopulations, and displayed an increase in neurite growth when exposed to cancer-derived conditioned medium, while they showed a reduction in neurite length when treated with a neurotoxic chemotherapeutic agent. Additionally, a semi-automated quantification method was developed to measure neurite length in an accurate and time-efficient manner. Finally, these exogenous factors altered the gene expression patterns of murine primary sensory neurons, which are related to nerve growth, and neuro-inflammatory pain and nociceptor development. Together, the primary DRG neuronal culture in combination with a semi-automated quantification method can be a useful tool for further understanding the impact of exogenous factors on the growth of sensory nerve fibers and gene expression changes in sensory neurons.