EXPANSION OF ADULT SCHWANN CELLS FROM RAT PERIPHERAL NERVES
成年大鼠雪旺细胞的快速扩增

Using an artificial nerve conduit containing Schwann cells to repair peripheral nerve injuries is one of the most promising methods, in attempts to design an alternative to autografts. It is necessary for the clinical use of the method to obtain a large number of viable Schwann cells from small amounts of adult nerves fragments within a short period of time. An effective technique for isolation and expansion of Schwann cells from adult rat peripheral nerves was presented. Schwann cells were isolated from the 7 d predegenerated sciatic nerve and seeded on the flasks coated with laminin. After the 7 d proliferation exploiting endogenous mechanisms of cell expansion, the purity of Schwann cells was 96% and the density was about 600 cells/mm2, which were markedly higher than that of Schwann cells isolated from the fresh nerve. Mitogenes and cytotoxic drugs were not used in this method, which meets the demand of clinical application. These results indicated that this method can be used to isolate and expand adult Schwann cells from small amounts of preinjured nerve fragments in a short time period.