Background: Axon-wrapping myelin sheath is vital to nerve conduction, loss or dysfunction of it will result in some neurological diseases. Since mature oligodendrocytes (OLs) lack proliferation ability, and oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs) maintain slow proliferation or quiescence state, transplantation of exogenous OPCs becomes an alternative strategy for curing these diseases.
Methods: OPCs were isolated from brain tissue and generated from NIH/3T3 cells via indirect lineage conversion here.
Results: 0.25 % chicken serum was conducive to trypsin-mediated digestion of cerebral cortex, the modified shaking method could improve the purification efficiency of OPCs. Poly-MAG was a safer and higher efficient nanovector for delivering plasmid DNA into cells. Forced expressions of Olig 2, Nkx 6.2, and Sox 10 could attenuate the expressions of fibroblast-related genes (Col5a1 and Col1a1), up-regulate OPC-associated genes (PDGFRα, S100β, NG2, and Olig 2), and finally successfully reprogram NIH/3T3 cells into induced oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (iOPCs). 1 μM haloperidol (HAL) contributed to promoting the proliferation of iOPCs. These iOPCs had the potential to be differentiated into OLs and type Ⅱ astrocytes.
Conclusions: The high-efficiency and low-cytotoxicity strategies for isolating mouse primary OPCs and generating iOPCs were established, which provided novel cell resources for disease modeling, drug screening, cell therapy, and so on.