Curcumin Induces the Cell Differentiation of Cortical Neural Stem Cells (NSCs)

Abstract

Research on herbal curcumin is still developing, one of which is its role in stimulating the proliferation and differentiation of neural stem cells (NSC). We studied the ability of curcumin to stimulate neural stem cell proliferation to obtain optimal doses of cell proliferation. The concentrations of curcumin in this study were 0.1 µM, 0.5 µM, one µM, and two µM. The positive controls used were Synthetic Growth Factor Basic Fibroblast Growth Factor (bFGF), Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF), and heparin. The dimethyl Sulfoxide (DMSO) solution was used as a control negative. Analysis of NSC proliferation ability using the WST-1 (Water Soluble tetrazolium) test. RT-PCR test is used to analyze the expression of neural cell proliferation marker genes (MAP-2 gene, Nestin gene, and SOX2. Morphological results and gene expression analysis showed that the cells proliferated optimally at 0.5 μM curcumin dose. One-way ANOVA analysis test and Tukey posthoc test results in the WST-1 test showed that 0.5 μM curcumin concentration was the optimal concentration to stimulate cell proliferation. Sox2, MAP-2, and Nestin gene expression test results. The highest occurred at 0.5 μM curcumin.  The results of this study show that a curcumin concentration of 0.5 μM can stimulate NSC cell proliferation like stimulation by synthetic growth factors.