Olfactory neuroepithelium-derived neural progenitor cells as a model system for investigating the molecular mechanisms of XXXX .

@entity1 @entity161 @entity146
OBJECTIVE: Most expression profiling studies of @entity146 have used RNA from postmortem brain tissue. Such studies are confounded by terminal events, environmental variables, such as drug use or abuse, postmortem interval, and tissue pH. To address these limitations, we have explored the use of cultured neuronal cells derived from olfactory neuroepithelium (CNON) from nasal biopsies as an alternate source of RNA. CNON cells are primarily composed of neural progenitor cells and are less influenced by environmental variables as compared with adult postmortem brain tissue. METHODS: We collected biopsy samples and established CNON cultures from eight @entity161 cases and eight healthy comparison individuals. RNA from the cells was profiled using Affymetrix @entity1 Exon 1.0 ST arrays and the results were validated by immunostaining and real-time quantitative PCR. RESULTS: The expression data show that CNON are primarily composed of neural progenitor cells. Furthermore, we observed a substantially higher correlation of global expression between control samples of CNON (0.98), as compared with postmortem tissue (GDS1917) (0.88). Finally, using the genome-wide expression data, we were able to differentiate CNON samples derived from individuals with and without @entity161 in a principal component analysis and to identify candidate @entity161 genes. CONCLUSION: CNON is a novel model system for the study of @entity146 that drastically reduces both technical and biological noise as compared with postmortem tissue and is therefore well suited for the identification of genes that are differentially expressed between cases and controls.
