The study of the effect of quercetin on the proliferation and differentiation of neural stem cells of sub-ventricular zone (SVZ) in the adult rats

The presence of neural precursor stem cells (NSCs) in some parts of the adult brains and the potency of these types of cells for the acceleration of the proliferation and differentiation processes with a therapeutic viewpoint is another beneficial facet of the application of neural precursor stem cells in cell biology. Quercetin, as an herbal flavonoid, has been extensively investigated and shown to have numerous effects on some cell-lines and disorders. We aimed to investigate the impact of quercetin, on proliferation and differentiation of NSCs derived from the subventricular zone (SVZ) of the adult rat brains. The isolated SVZs were mechanically minced into pieces through repeated pipetting in phosphate-buffered saline, incubated with 0.25% trypsin and treated with trypsin inhibitor; then centrifuged to obtain the cell suspension. The obtained cell suspension was cultured for one week to achieve neurospheres. When the cells reached confluence of 70-80%, they were sub-cultured for three passages and in the third passage, quercetin was treated with the cultured cells at the concentrations of 1, 5, and 15 μM. Methods such as Real time-PCR, MTT assay and ImageJ software, have been used to validate differentiation and proliferation of cells. The results indicated that the differentiation rate of NSCs is affected by various concentrations of quercetin in a dose-dependent manner so that 1µM quercetin had the least, and 15µM quercetin showed the most effects on cell differentiation. However, 1µM quercetin exhibited no significant cell toxicity, the most antiproliferative potential showed when treated with 15µM concentration quercetin.