The Influence of Lithium Chloride on Induction of Bone Marrow Stromal Cells into Neuronal Phenotype

Bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) are a kind of stem cells with high pluripotency. The BMSCs can differentiate into mesodermal and non mesodermal cells. Because of availability of them, they are a suitable source of adult stem cells for cell therapy. Some inducers were used to differentiate stem cells into neural phenotype, such: retinoic acid, dimethyl sulfoxide, deprenil & et al are cytotoxic compound. Lithium is a mood stabilizer drug that has supportive effect on neuronal cells. Our goal in this study is use of lithium chloride as a safe inducer for induction of BMSCs into neuronal phenotype. The BMSCs were isolated from bone marrow of female rat’s femurs and tibias by aspiration and culturing. After 4 passages they were induced by lithium chloride (0.5mM) for 24 hours. Then they evaluated with microscopic and immunocytochemistry methods. In immunocytochemistry, anti-neurofilament 160, 68 and 200 KD and anti-synaptophysin antibody were used to characterize the neuronal phenotype. The results indicated that lithium chloride (0.5mM) can induced the BMSCs into neuronal phenotype after 24 hours. The percentage of fibronectin immunoreactive cells before induction was 95% and the percentage of neural markers immunoreactive cells after induction were 89.6% for neurofilament (NF) 68, 92% for NF-160, 93.2% for NF-200 and 70.2% for synaptophysin.