The preliminary study on in vitro differentiation of human umbilical cord blood cells into neural cells

To explore the feasibility of in vitro differentiation of human umbilical cord blood cells (HUCBC) into neural cells induced by receptor activator of NF-KappaB ligand (RANKL) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Normal fresh HUCBC were cultured as the following: (1) Control group cultured by differentiation medium only; (2) BDNF group, cultured by differentiation medium + BDNF; (3) RANKL group, cultured by differentiation medium + human soluble RANKL (sRANKL); (4) BDNF + RANKL group, cultured by differentiation medium + BDNF and sRANKL. Cultured cells were observed with invert microscope. After ten-days culture, the expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and neuron-specific nuclear protein (NeuN) of the cultured cells were detected by immunocytochemical staining. After 10 day's culture, the NeuN positive cells were (97.0 +/- 13.5), (85.0 +/- 5.6), (167.0 +/- 19.7) in RANKL, BDNF and BDNF + RANKL groups, respectively, with 1.7, 1.5, 3.0 fold in crease than that of control (55.7 +/- 8.5),