Modelling ischaemia in vitro: effects of temperature and glucose concentration on dopamine release evoked by oxygen and glucose depletion in a mouse brain slice.

Current pharmacological interventions for acute stroke are largely ineffective or confounded by adverse effects, emphasising the need to develop new pharmacological treatments for neuroprotection. We have developed a robust in vitro model previously used in rats to assess dopamine release in mouse caudate nucleus brain slices, measured by fast cyclic voltammetry, during oxygen and glucose deprivation (OGD) as a model for cerebral ischaemia: this model will allow the study of transgenic mouse strains. During the pre-OGD equilibration period we found that a temperature of 33°C, with solution containing 10 mM glucose provided the optimum baseline conditions from which reliable OGD-induced changes in dopamine efflux could be measured, without being susceptible to spontaneous release events. During OGD we found no significant difference in any of the parameters measured between perfusion with glucose-free solution, and perfusion with solution containing 2 mM glucose. We therefore suggest, in agreement with previous work, that using 2 mM glucose during OGD is appropriate, and using these conditions we were able to reliably produce OGD-evoked dopamine release.