Current Neurobiology

Objective of the present study is to evaluate the proliferative activity of water extracts of Stichopus variegatus on spinal astrocytes cell lines. To study the doses dependant effect of Stichopus variegatus Water Extracts (SVWE) on spinal astrocytes, the extracts were prepared in four different concentrations of 0.1, 1.0, 5.0 and 10.0 μg/ml. The Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF), 10.0ng/ml was used as positive control. The proliferation assay was performed using [3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-5-(3-carboxymethoxyphenyl)-2-(4-sulfophenyl)-2H-tetrazolium] (MTS) Assay Kit. The proliferation was presented as percentages of surviving spinal astrocytes after 72h treatments. Our study shows that the SVWE has proliferative effect on rat spinal astrocytes in a dose dependant manner. At 10μg/ml SVWE showed a significant increase in the spinal astrocytes proliferation over a period of 72h (p<0.01). At the concentration of 5μg/ml, the astrocytes proliferation was seen to increase only at 72h (p<0.05). The EC50 of SVWE was 5.18 μg/ml. The Malaysian SVWE (EC50=5.18 μg/ml) shows potential as a growth promoting agent to promote proliferation of spinal astrocytes at the concentration of 5.0 and 10.0μg/ml.