Poster 107 - Modelling the effect of Amyloid Beta in oligodendrocyte differentiation and maturation

Oligodendrocytes (OL) are a supporting cell in the brain, whose main function is to produce myelin. Myelin acts as insulation to the axons, allowing rapid transmission of action potential as well as maintaining their health and structure. The loss of myelin has been reported in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), one of the most commonly occurring forms of dementia. The reported myelin loss has often been considered as a secondary event, which occurs as a result of the loss of axons, however, recent studies have shown evidence that myelin loss could be an independent event in AD, resulting from the toxicity of beta-amyloid. To determine the effect of beta-amyloid on oligodendrocytes, we first established and characterized a primary culture model to grow oligodendrocytes to specific stages of differentiation (OPC, ImmatureOL, Mature-OL) using stage-specific media and following a recently published protocol. Immunocytochemical analysis was used to characterize the different developmental stages present in the cultures. Our results demonstrated that application of Mature-OL media to induce oligodendrocyte maturation resulted in significantly (p<0.05) more oligodendrocytes immunopositive for the myelin marker proteolipid protein (PLP) than OPC or Immature-OL media following 5 days in culture, with >70% cells immunoreactive. This demonstrates that our new is able to generate high percentages of oligodendrocytes at specific stages of development. This model will now be utilized to characterized the effect of extracellular Aβ on oligodendrocyte development in vitro.