Fig. 2

Differentiation of human telencephalon-derived neural stem/progenitor cells (hNPCs) in conditioned medium collected from bone marrow-derived human mesenchymal stem cells (BM-hMSCs) expanded in either (a) static culture in fetal bovine serum (FBS)-based medium (T-flasks) or (b )500-ml computer-controlled suspension bioreactors in PPRF-msc6 medium [84]. Shown are cells expressing MAP2 (red) and TO-PRO-3 (blue). Conditioned medium collected from hMSCs expanded in PPRF-msc6/bioreactor resulted in a higher differentiation of hNPCs to MAP2⁺ neurons. Additionally, hNPC survival was higher in the PPRF-msc6/bioreactor-expanded hMSC conditioned medium. In contrast, hNPCs incubated in the FBS/static-expanded hMSC conditioned medium had a lower survival and differentiation into MAP2⁺ neurons. This indicates that the conditioned medium collected from our PPRF-msc6/bioreactor conditions contained factors that promoted the survival and differentiation of hNPCs into neurons. However, the FBS/static conditioned medium was less effective in causing hMSCs to secrete these factors. Scale bars: 50 μm