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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Cell Dev. Biol.
Sec. Stem Cell Research
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcell.2025.1546131
This article is part of the Research Topic Neural Stem Cell and Its Niche View all articles

Hyperoxia shows duration-dependent effects on the lengths of cell cycle phases in fetal cortical neural stem cells

Provisionally accepted
Jennifer Lanto Jennifer Lanto 1Monika Maria Nicole Vehlken Monika Maria Nicole Vehlken 1Valeriia Abramenko Valeriia Abramenko 1Alexander Storch Alexander Storch 1,2Franz Markert Franz Markert 1*
  • 1 University Hospital Rostock, Rostock, Germany
  • 2 German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) Rostock/Greifswald, Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Fetal neural stem cells (NSCs) physiologically reside under low-oxygen conditions (1-5% of tissue pO2), but are often transferred and maintained under atmospheric oxygen levels of 21% pO2 (hyperoxia) for in vitro investigations. These altered oxygen conditions lead to adaptive changes in NSCs which complicate the interpretation of in vitro data. However, the underlying adaption dynamics remain largely enigmatic. Here we investigated short-term hyperoxia effects (5 days in 3% pO2 followed by 2 days in 21% pO2) in comparison to continuous hyperoxia effects (7 days in 21% pO2) and physioxic control (7 days in 3% pO2). We utilized cortical NSCs to analyze the cell cycle phases by flow cytometry and cumulative BrdU incorporation assay. NSCs showed a severe reduction of cell proliferation when cultivated under continuous hyperoxia, but no changes after short-term hyperoxia. Subsequent cell cycle analysis as assessed by flow cytometry revealed a clear shift of NSCs from G0/G1-phase towards S-or G2/M-phase after both continuous and short-term hyperoxia. However, while cell cycle length was dramatically reduced by short-term hyperoxia, it was increased during continuous hyperoxia. Taken together, our results demonstrate the beneficial effect of physioxia for expanding NSCs in vitro and reveal differential effects of short-term hyperoxia compared to continuous hyperoxia.

    Keywords: Oxygen, Neural Stem Cells, hypoxia, Hyperoxia, physioxia, Cortex, cell cycle phases, proliferation

    Received: 16 Dec 2024; Accepted: 13 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Lanto, Vehlken, Abramenko, Storch and Markert. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Franz Markert, University Hospital Rostock, Rostock, Germany

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