Tahere Bahmani; Samira Gholami; Ali Mostafaie; Ebrahim Karimi; Zohreh Hoseinkhani; Taha Azad; Hamid Mahdizadeh & Kamran Mansouri

Surgical techniques for treatment of sensory neural hearing loss (SNHL) have unpredictable outcomes and in recent years cell therapy investigated for treatment of SNHL. Olfactory epithelium proceed neurogenesis during life time and provide an easily accessible source of neural stem cells. So the aim of this study was isolating neural stem cells from olfactory epithelium of rat and differentiation of these cells into hair cells of inner ear in vitro. The epithelium tissue of olfactory mucosa of rats were removed and digested by collagenase H. The digested tissue was cultured in flasks in suspension forms to create spheres. Spheres were passaged and from passage 2 spheres selected for differentiation. At this stage cells of spheres isolated from each other and placed in flask containing defined differentiation medium. Cells at this stage cultured in adhesive form. Immunohistochemistry and RT-PCR were used for neural stem cells and hair cells identification. Spheres formed from olfactory epithelium culture and immunohistochemistry revealed that cells of spheres from passage one and two expressed the neural stem cells markers. After culture of isolated cells in differentiation medium, the morphology of cells begun to change. The cells presented neural cells projections and after 10 days the projections elongated more and interact to each other in multi layers. RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry revealed that differentiated cells expressed hair cells specific genes. In this study we showed that neural stem cells of olfactory epithelium can differentiate into hair cells of inner ear and therefore can be used for treatment of SNHL.

KEY WORDS: Olfactory mucosa; Neural stem cells; Hair cells; Differentiation; Rat.

BAHMANI, T. ; GHOLAMI, S.; MOSTAFAIE, A.; KARIMI, E.; HOSEINKHANI, Z.; AZAD, T.; MAHDIZADEH, H. & MANSOURI, K. Olfactory epithelium as an infinitive source of neural stem cells for derivation of inner ear hair cells. Int. J. Morphol., 35(2): 413-419, 2017.