Icariin Promotes Survival, Proliferation, and Differentiation of Neural Stem Cells In Vitro and in a Rat Model of Alzheimer’s Disease

Figure 2

Identification of NSCs isolated from embryonic day 14 rats and beneficial effects of ICA on the survival and proliferation of NSCs in vitro. (a) Representative images of nestin-positive cells (A1, green) and BrdU-positive cells (A2, red) in a neurosphere. After differentiation, NSCs were immunoreactive to neuron marker Tuj1 (A3, green) and astrocyte marker GFAP (A4, red). Hoechst (A5) and Merge (A6). Scale . (b) The optical density of NSCs treated with different concentrations of ICA as measured by cell-count kit-8 (CCK-8) assay, . (c) Immunostaining of BrdU-labelled NSCs under different proliferation mediums (C1: basic DMEM/F12 medium; C2-5: basic medium with ICA at 0.1, 1, 10, and 20 μM; C6: basic medium with EGF 20 ng/ml and bEGF 20 ng/ml), scale . (d) Quantitative analysis of the percentage of BrdU-positive cells. Data are expressed as the , . and , drug-treated groups vs the control group.

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