Rat CNS white matter, but not gray matter, is nonpermissive for neuronal cell adhesion and fiber outgrowth.

In adult mammalian CNS, axons mostly fail to regenerate after injury, while in the PNS they often succeed in reaching their previous targets. Crucial differences are present in the local tissue microenvironment of CNS and PNS. To investigate the substrate properties of nervous tissue for neuronal adhesion and fiber growth, we used frozen sections of rat CNS and PNS as culture substrates for neuroblastoma cells and for sympathetic and dorsal root ganglia. The results showed that CNS white matter from adult rat spinal cord, cerebellum, forebrain, or optic nerve did not allow cell adhesion and axonal elongation. In contrast, gray matter areas, sciatic nerve, and also trout CNS white and gray matter were permissive substrates. To delineate the tissue components of white matter involved in this nonpermissive substrate effect, newborn rats were injected for 13 d with the antimitotic agent 5-azacytidine. This treatment strongly reduced the oligodendrocyte population and the myelin content of the spinal cord. The immunoreactivity for specific oligodendrocyte and astrocyte markers confirmed the selective suppression of oligodendroglia in these rats. Neuroblastoma cells plated on spinal cord sections taken from these animals were no longer exclusively localized on the gray matter but were also found on regions normally rich in myelin. A significant reduction of the white matter nonpermissive substrate effect was also obtained by the monoclonal antibody IN-1 directed against 2 defined myelin proteins with inhibitory substrate properties (Caroni and Schwab, 1988b). Our results, therefore, show that, in the adult mammalian CNS, cell adhesion and axonal elongation are prevented by white matter components, which are, at least in part, associated with oligodendrocytes and myelin.