Author Spotlight: Studying Neuroinflammatory Pathways Through Simultaneous Isolation of All Main CNS-Resident Cell Types

To investigate molecular and cellular mechanisms in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, the generation of reproducible and sophisticated cell isolation protocols is an unmet need. Most of the current technologies to isolate and analyze CNS-resident cells show serious shortcomings, such as focusing on only one cell type or only postnatal mice. The current protocol for the simultaneous isolation of all main CNS-resident cell types from one CNS replicate offers the possibility to analyze complex neuronal networks and new inflammatory pathways, ex vivo from one single cell suspension, applicable to healthy mice and those with experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

Additionally, mice numbers are decreased Our protocol for the simultaneous isolation of all four major CNS-resident cell types in healthy and EAE mice could be used as a helpful tool for research groups studying new inflammatory pathways, allowing a much more accurate analysis of complex biomolecular mechanisms and cellular networks ex vivo. New scientific questions that could be answered with the help of our protocol are dynamic investigations in EAE during different stages of disease course, like neuroinflammation, neurodegeneration, and remission. Also, cell-cell interactions and biochemical pathways could be studied on an individual level.

Likewise, functional assays could be performed with cultivated cells. We intend to focus on dynamic studies of the EAE course for multi-omic analysis from one individual CNS homogenate per EAE time point.