Up-regulation of reactive astrogliosis in the rat glioma 9L cell line by combined mechanical and chemical injuries.

The 9L rat glioma cells grown in culture, when subjected to a mechanical injury (scratch wound) and/or a chemical injury (CdCl2) manifest changes which are characteristic of an astrocyte reaction (astrogliosis) in the central nervous system. Such changes include cell hypertrophy and an increase in immunostaining for the astrocytic marker proteins, glial fibrillary acidic protein and J1-31 antigen. Mitochondria also increase in size and number, and the endoplasmic reticulum expands in area. These mechanical and chemical injuries are coordinated, and act synergistically to induce a considerably more intense astroglial reaction by 9L cells than can be elicited with either injurious agent alone, and this occurs without any interactions with microglia, neurons or oligodendroglia. The phenomenon suggests that more than one transcriptional mechanism is involved in the activation of astrocytes, and that mechanical and CdCl2-induced injuries, respectively, probably affect different receptors and second- and third-messenger pathways. There are a number of questions concerning the molecular biology of reactive astrocytes which can be addressed through the use of the 9L rat glioma cell model. This model offers certain advantages over primary cultures of astrocytes, namely a low basal level of reactivity (because the cells are not subjected to mechanical injury prior to experimentation), an absence of contaminating microglial cells, greater ease of reproducibility of results, lower costs and avoidance of the use of animals.