Like humans, congenitally deaf cats have an abnormal auditory nerve structure, with nerve endings that lack most of the small cellular spheres, called synaptic vesicles, that carry chemical transmitters from one nerve cell to the next.
The cells were further cultured until appearance of floating cellular spheres.
In contrast, floating cellular spheres (hence after designed as oncospheres) were observed in 49/55 tumor cultures (Figure 1 and Figure S2).
CD133- cells were also able to form floating cellular spheres with properties undistinguishable from those of CD133+ cells.
They revealed the unique ability of MGNTs to yield cellular spheres that could be amplified for very long periods.
The cellular spheres were dissociated, and plated at 200 or 1 cell/well in 96-well plates.
After 7 days of culturing, the formed cellular spheres (sarcospheres) were collected, dissociated with accutase and re-seeded again in stressful growth conditions for formation of secondary spheres.
It turned out that regeneration from those cellular spheres is accompanied by saw tooth pulsations [ 497, 584] presumably due to osmotic swelling and pressure release [ 585].
In twelve of the fifteen cultures of MGNTs, floating cellular spheres were observed after 14 to 60 days in culture, and could be amplified from 6 months up to 52 months.
