TY - JOUR A1 - Engert, Jonas A1 - Spahn, Bjoern A1 - Bieniussa, Linda A1 - Hagen, Rudolf A1 - Rak, Kristen A1 - Voelker, Johannes T1 - Neurogenic stem cell niche in the auditory Thalamus: in vitro evidence of neural stem cells in the rat medial geniculate body JF - Life N2 - The medial geniculate body (MGB) is a nucleus of the diencephalon representing a relevant segment of the auditory pathway and is part of the metathalamus. It receives afferent information via the inferior brachium of the inferior colliculus and transmits efferent fibers via acoustic radiations to the auditory cortex. Neural stem cells (NSCs) have been detected in certain areas along the auditory pathway. They are of great importance as the induction of an adult stem cell niche might open a regenerative approach to a causal treatment of hearing disorders. Up to now, the existence of NSCs in the MGB has not been determined. Therefore, this study investigated whether the MGB has a neural stem cell potential. For this purpose, cells were extracted from the MGB of PND 8 Sprague-Dawley rats and cultured in a free-floating cell culture assay, which showed mitotic activity and positive staining for stem cell and progenitor markers. In differentiation assays, the markers β-III-tubulin, GFAP, and MBP demonstrated the capacity of single cells to differentiate into neuronal and glial cells. In conclusion, cells from the MGB exhibited the cardinal features of NSCs: self-renewal, the formation of progenitor cells, and differentiation into all neuronal lineage cells. These findings may contribute to a better understanding of the development of the auditory pathway. KW - neurosphere KW - auditory pathway KW - neural stem cell potential Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-319387 SN - 2075-1729 VL - 13 IS - 5 ER -