Modeling traumatic injury in organotypic spinal cord slice culture obtained from adult rat.

Nowadays there are various models of spinal cord injury (SCI) that recreate mechanisms of human SCI. The ex vivo modeling of injury is a robust approach, confronts with less experimental and ethical challenges. Currently almost all ex vivo models are obtained either from embryonic or postnatal animals, which can hardly mimic features of human SCI. This study was designed to develop SCI in slice culture of adult rats. Here, the lumbar enlargement of an adult rat was sliced and cultured. After seven days in vitro, a weight was dropped to simulate the injury. The result showed that although the rate of cell death in first days of in vitro was high, it reduced after 7 days and dropping a weight at the time caused significant rate of cell death in slices. It was shown that injury can disturb histological features and neuronal integrity in the slices. Treating the injured slices with valproic acid resulted in a significant decrease of TNF-α and increase of BDNF expression. Collected data revealed obtained slices from adult rat were able to adjust to the culture environment after 7 days and dropping a weight at the time point could simulate the injury. Besides mimicking the disturbing features of human SCI, this model can response to VPA pharmacological treatment.