Neuroscience
Oxygen is an important physiological parameter in healthy neural tissues. Levels range 1-6% O2 in neurons and glial cells and are never at the 21% O2 (room air oxygen) present in most cell-based neuroscience. Since oxygen modulates neural cell function, use of physiologic oxygen (or physioxia) during in vitro experiments is helpful for adding physiological relevance.
Oxygen regulates:
- mitochondrial function of astrocytes
- differentiation of oligodendroglial cells
- dopaminergic neurogenesis
- neuronal cell differentiation
- expansion of neural progenitors
- neural progenitor fate
- dopaminergic differentiation
- oligodendrocyte lineage cell yields
- neuronal metabolism
- proliferation of mesencephalic precursor cells
- transcriptional regulation in astrocytes
- neurite outgrowth
- expansion of neural precursor cells
Pathological oxygen levels (hypoxia or hyperoxia) are used for modeling many types of neural diseases and disorders: Alzheimer's Disease, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), brain ischemia, stroke, ischemia-reperfusion, oxygen glucose deprivation (OGD), neurodegeneration, gliomas (including glioblastoma), neuroplasticity, sleep apnea, and neurodevelopmental disorders, Elevated CO2 (hypercapnia) is commonly used in anxiety models.
Equipment Options
ProOx C21 & C-Chamber
The physiologic oxygen chamber, ProOx C21 & C-Chamber is a subchamber system allowing researchers to add control of specific O2 levels within existing cell incubators without increasing the laboratory’s equipment footprint. Adding two or more ProOx C21 & C-Chamber oxygen chambers helps provide simultaneous control at multiple oxygen levels over the full range of physiologic values.
OxyCycler C42 & C-Chamber
Cell Research - physioxia/hypoxia chamber with dynamic control of O2 and CO2 - C42 & C-Chambers
Xvivo System
The Xvivo System from BioSpherix Ltd is a physiologic oxygen workstation combining one or more O2 incubators with attachable closed hoods. This provides non-varying physioxic conditions during the entire cell experiment. The Xvivo System may be outfitted with multiple O2 incubators so investigators can perform experiments at different O2 tensions at the same time. The Xvivo System’s modular physioxia hoods are connected to the incubator chamber(s) to permit cell handling and cell analysis under the same conditions found in the incubator.
