[Study on the anti-apoptosis effect of insulin-like growth factor I on the regulation of neural precursor cells survival].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) on the anti-apoptosis of neural precursor cells. METHODS: Rat neural precursor cells (Ge6) were used as experiment object. 10 ng/mL IGF- I were applied to cultured Ge6 differentiated 2 d, 4 d, 6 d and the untreated cells as control. Quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR (qRT-PCR) was used to detect the effect of the IGF-I on caspase-3 mRNA in the Ge6 of different groups and Immunofluorescent staining were applied to obverse the positive rate of caspase-3. RESULTS: qRT-PCR demonstrated that caspase-3 mRNA level of experimental group decreased compared to that of the control group, the differences between experimental group cultured for 4 d (2.007 +/- 0.297), 6 d (1.194 +/- 0.244) and the control group cultured for 4 d (5.530 +/- 1.027), 6 d (5.371 +/- 0.513) were statistically significant (P < 0.05). Immunofluorescent staining indicated that the caspase-3 positive rate of experimental group cultured for 2 d, 4 d and 6 d were reduced compared to that of the control group, the differences between experimental group cultured for 4 d (3.5% +/- 10.2%), 6 d (5.1% +/- 0.1%) and the control group cultured for 4 d (7.0% +/- 10.5%), 6 d (7.4% +/- 0.4%) were statistically significant (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: IGF-I plays an anti-apoptosis role on neural precursor cells.