effect of the polyamine component, tdmtn, on apoptosis of motor neurons in adult mouse spinal cord slices

background: the aim of this study was to investigate the preventive effect of the polyamine component n, n, n´, n´-tetrakis(2-aminoethyl)2,2-dimethylpropane-1,3-diamine (tdmtn) on apoptotic motor neurons in adult mouse spinal cord slices. materials and methods: thoracic region of adult mouse spinal cords was sliced by a tissue chopper into 400 μm slices and cultured in medium in the presence or absence of tdmtn for 6 hours. morphological a features of apoptosis were evaluated using fluorescent staining with propidium iodide and hoechst 33342. the appearance of nucleosomal dna fragmentation was studied using agarose gel electrophoresis. our results were analyzed using the one-way anova and tukey’s tests. results: after 6 hours in culture, motor neurons displayed morphological sings of apoptosis including cell shrinkage, as well as nuclear and chromatin condensation. dna extracted from slices cultured for 24 hours revealed nucleosomal dna fragmentation on agarose gel electrophoresis. tdmtn reduced the occurrence of apoptosis in motor neurons and significantly (p<0.01) increased the viability of these neurons after 6 hours of culturing. conclusion: tdmtn, as a polyamine component, could probably prevent the occurrence of motor neuron apoptosis through calcium chelation.