engleski

Thymospheres surface area – a tool to monitor microenvironment influence on development

Thymus is an essential organ of the human immune system since it is involved in maturation and differentiation of T lymphocytes. Aside of lymphocytes, thymus is composed of several stromal cells of which thymic epithelial cells (TEC) are particularly interesting being the ones responsible for shaping the T cell repertoire. Therefore, the objective of the current research is to understand the fine interplay between thymic cells in order to gain knowledge and procedures that will allow repairing and restoration of a disrupted immune system. One of the newer approaches for characterisation of thymic epithelial stem/progenitor cells ex vivo exploits their ability to form spheres (thymospheres) in a low-attachment culturing conditions. These thymospheres are enriched with cells that possess stemness features. Different growth factors are involved in proliferation and differentiation of these cells and the measurement of the size of thymospheres could be a possibility how to evaluate microenvironment factors and their influence on development and differentiation of TECs. Consequently, we have cultivated human paediatric thymus samples in low-attachment conditions with certain growth factors to gain thymospheres. After 13 days of cultivation, thymospheres were counted, photographed by an inverted microscope with digital camera and surface area was measured with the ImageJ software.

thymospheres, surface area, microenvironment influence

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