High purity of human oligodendrocyte progenitor cells obtained from neural stem cells: Suitable for clinical application

Recent studies have suggested that the transplantation of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs) may be a promising potential therapeutic strategy for a broad range of diseases affecting myelin, such as multiple sclerosis, periventricular leukomalacia, and spinal cord injury. Clinical interest arose from the potential of human stem cells to be directed to OPCs for the clinical application of treating these diseases since large quantities of high quality OPCs are needed. However, to date, there have been precious few studies about OPC induction from human neural stem cells (NSCs). Here we successfully directed human fetal NSCs into highly pure OPCs using a cocktail of basic fibroblast growth factor, platelet-derived growth factor, and neurotrophic factor-3. These cells had typical morphology of OPCs, and 80–90% of them expressed specific OPC markers such as A2B5, O4, Sox10 and PDGF-αR. When exposed to differentiation medium, 90% of the cells differentiated into oligodendrocytes. The OPCs could be amplified in our culture medium and passaged at least 10 times. Compared to a recent published method, this protocol had much higher stability and repeatability, and OPCs could be obtained from NSCs from passage 5 to 38. It also obtained more highly pure OPCs (80–90%) via simpler and more convenient manipulation. This study provided an easy and efficient method to obtain large quantities of high-quality human OPCs to meet clinical demand.