The mammalian ovarian follicle consists of a multilayered complex of somatic cells that surround the oocyte. A signal from the follicle cells keeps the oocyte cell cycle arrested at prophase of meiosis I until luteinizing hormone from the pituitary acts on the follicle cells to release the arrest, causing meiosis to continue. Here we show that meiotic arrest can be released in mice by microinje...

Pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) is a neuropeptide originally purified from ovine hypothalamus for its potent activity to stimulate cAMP production. However, its presence and action have also been demonstrated in various peripheral tissues including the ovary. In the zebrafish, two forms of PACAP (PACAP(38)-1, adcyap1a; and PACAP(38)-2, adcyap1b) and three PACAP recept...

The ovarian follicle is the functional unit of the ovary that secretes sex hormones and supports oocyte maturation. In vitro follicle techniques provide a tool to model follicle development in order to investigate basic biology, and are further being developed as a technique to preserve fertility in the clinic. Our in vitro culture system employs hydrogels in order to mimic the native ovarian e...

Follicle development can be divided into gonadotrophin-independent, gonadotrophin-responsive and gonadotrophin-dependent phases. The basic level of control of folliculogenesis lies with the actions of an extensively observed but poorly understood range of somatic and germ cell derived local factors that constitute an intrafollicular developmental cascade that regulates the proliferative and dif...

A critical step in ovarian biology is the transition of the developmentally arrested primordial follicle to the growing primary follicle. The current study utilizes a rat ovarian organ culture system to investigate the role of insulin and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) in this process. Four-day-old rat ovaries were cultured and the degree of primordial to primary follicle transition measu...

Versican, a proteoglycan recently implicated in hair follicle induction, has been shown to influence axon outgrowth in vitro and in vivo. We used immunohistochemistry to study the relationship between versican expression and innervation, during rat vibrissa follicle development and the adult hair cycle. During development, nerve fibres were commonly associated with areas of weak versican expres...

Ultrastructural and morphometric changes in oocyte and surrounding granulosa cells during armadillo follicular growth are described. Primordial, intermediary, early and late primary, secondary, tertiary and preovulatory Graafian follicles were found. From primordial to Graafian follicle, granulosa cells increase in height, become multilayered while fluid-filled spaces arise among them in the te...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the safety of our follicle isolation procedure in a model of ovarian tissue artificially contaminated with cancer cells, then to improve the procedure to effectively eliminate malignant cells from follicle suspensions without altering viability. DESIGN Prospective experimental study. SETTING Gynecology research unit in a university hospital. PATIENT(S) Ten women unde...

The hair follicle bulge area is an abundant, easily accessible source of actively growing, pluripotent adult stem cells. Nestin, a protein marker for neural stem cells, also is expressed in follicle stem cells and their immediate, differentiated progeny. The fluorescent protein GFP, whose expression is driven by the nestin regulatory element in transgenic mice, served to mark the follicle cell ...

Chemotherapy-induced alopecia is a major problem in clinical oncology. Doxorubicin, a widely used cancer chemotherapy drug, induces disruption of the hair cycle and subsequent alopecia. We show in this report that doxorubicin causes disruption of the hair-follicle-associated blood vessel network resulting in a greatly reduced density of these blood vessels. Dystrophic hair follicles were also o...