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A procedure in mice to obtain intact pituitary-infundibulum-hypothalamus preparations: a method to evaluate the reconstruction of hypothalamohypophyseal system

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Abstract

Purpose

The histopathological study of brain tissue is a common method in neuroscience. However, efficient procedures to preserve the intact hypothalamic-pituitary brain specimens are not available in mice for histopathological study.

Method

We describe a detailed procedure for obtaining mouse brain with pituitary-hypothalamus continuity. Unlike the traditional methods, we collect the brain via a ventral approach. We cut the intraoccipital synchondrosis, transection the endocranium of pituitary, broke the spheno-occipital synchondrosis, expose the posterior edge of pituitary, separate the trigeminal nerve, then the intact pituitary gland was preserved.

Result

We report an more effective and practical method to obtain continuous hypothalamus -pituitary preparations based on the preserve of leptomeninges.

Compared with the existing methods

Our procedure effectively protects the integrity of the fragile infundibulum preventing the pituitary from separating from the hypothalamus. This procedure is more convenient and efficient.

Conclusion

We present a convenient and practical procedure to obtain intact hypothalamic-pituitary brain specimens for subsequent histopathological evaluation in mice.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the careful reading and thoughtful comments of the reviewers, whose efforts greatly improved the quality of this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the GuangDong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation(No. 2021A1515011371; No. 2021A1515110290; No. 2020A1515110564; No. 2023A1515010150), Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangzhou (No. 202102020977), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 82201516; No. 81900709), President Foundation of Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University (2019C001, 2019C016, 2021C045).

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Author notes

  1. Kai Li, Zhiwei Xiong and Mingfeng Zhou have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurosurgery, Institute of Brain Diseases, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510515, China

    Kai Li, Zhiwei Xiong, Mingfeng Zhou, Yichao Ou, Weizhao Li, Guangsen Wu, Mengjie Che, Haodong Gong, Xingqin Wang, Junjie Peng, Xiaoxuan Zheng, Zhanpeng Feng & Junxiang Peng

  2. The 74th Military Medical Hospital of Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Guangzhou, China

    Jiahui Li

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  1. Kai Li
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Contributions

The corresponding author has read the Springer journal policies on author responsibilities and submits this manuscript in accordance with those policies. LK: Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. ZX: Funding acquisition. MZ: Investigation. YO: Investigation. WL: Investigation. GW: Investigation. MC: Investigation. HG: Data curation. XW: Funding acquisition. JP: Formal analysis. JL: Formal analysis. XZ: Formal analysis. ZF: Funding acquisition, Methodology, Validation. JP: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Resources, Supervision, Validation.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zhanpeng Feng or Junxiang Peng.

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Conflict of interest

I declare that the authors have no competing interests as defined by Springer, or other interests that might be perceived to influence the results and/or discussion reported in this paper.

Ethical approval

All procedures were in accordance with our institutional guidelines and approved by the Ethics Committee of Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University.

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Li, K., Xiong, Z., Zhou, M. et al. A procedure in mice to obtain intact pituitary-infundibulum-hypothalamus preparations: a method to evaluate the reconstruction of hypothalamohypophyseal system. Pituitary 26, 197–208 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11102-023-01299-3

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