Abstract

Human neurosphere stem cells offer promising potential for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. Their well characterized multi-potency of differentiating into neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes when exposed to the optimum exogenous growth factors make them an exciting area of study (38). Finding novel endogenous methods of modulating stem cell metabolism will allow for the safer treatment of various brain disorders (34). In this experiment, melatonin, N-acetylserotonin, L-tryptophan, and L-DOPA are added in three different concentrations to neurospheres suspended in HNSC/GBM media with less than optimal concentrations of exogenous epidermal growth factor (EGF) and fibroblast growth factor (FGF). The alamarBlue assay (resazurin) was chosen as the most suitable assay for measuring neurosphere metabolism. Metabolic neural stem cells would cause the greatest reduction of the oxidized alamarBlue reagent (resazurin?resorufin), which was detected by a fluorescent plate reader (39-41). The percent reduction in alamarBlue was calculated for all four molecules at three different concentrations and compared to controls without any molecule. Our results illustrate that there was no statistically significant difference at p<0.05 between the biological molecules and the control group except for two exceptions (labeled with asterisks on figures 3 and 5) L-DOPA at a 40 micromolar concentration after 4 hours of incubation and melatonin at a 40 micromolar concentration after 52 hours of incubation.

Notes

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Thesis Completion

2014

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Sugaya, Kiminobu

Degree

Bachelor of Science (B.S.)

College

Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences

Department

Molecular Biology and Microbiology

Degree Program

Biotechnology

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Medicine; Medicine -- Dissertations, Academic

Format

PDF

Identifier

CFH0004688

Language

English

Access Status

Open Access

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Document Type

Honors in the Major Thesis

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