Cytogenesis and pathology of neuroglia and microglia.

To establish biologically meaningful classification of gliomas and to understand inflammatory, degenerative and metabolic diseases of the brain and spinal cord on cellular basis, knowledge of cytogenesis of the nervous system is indispensable. However, concepts in cytogenesis of the central nervous system have radically changed since introduction of modern techniques, such as electron microscopy, tritiated thymidine autoradiography, enzyme- and immuno-histochemistry. This special issue of Pathology, Research and Practice is planned to cover these topics by four authors from their special fields of research; electron microscopy (Skoff), electron microscopic autoradiography using tritiated thymidine (Kitamura), histochemistry and immunochemistry (Oehmichen) and immunohistochemistry (Rubinstein and his coworkers), on recent advances in cytogenesis and pathology of neuroglia and microglia.