BRAIN INJURY IN A DISH - A MODEL FOR REACTIVE GLIOSIS

Reactive gliosis is a powerful response to brain injury and subsequent neuronal damage in vivo. Neuronal cell cultures are now well establis hed as assays to study this process in vitro. However, equivalent stud ies of purified glial cell populations have only recently been achieve d, following the realization that glial cells produce many of the neur opeptides, transmitters and growth factors that are produced also by n eurons. There is now scope for studies in vitro that use mixed, identi fied populations of glial and neuronal cells to dissect the interactio ns between the two. Such cultures also lend themselves to assays for p otential therapeutic strategies for brain injury that take account of all the different cell types found in the brain.