We are pleased to share our latest collaborative article, published in iScience.
Oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs) generated in the ventricular-subventricular zone (V-SVZ) can migrate long distances to sites of brain injury, where they contribute to remyelination. However, the mechanisms that guide their efficient recruitment to lesions have remained unclear. In this study we asked how these V-SVZ-derived OPCs find their way to injured cortex.
Using a neonatal cortical injury model combined with live imaging and three-dimensional culture, we show that V-SVZ-derived OPCs migrate toward lesions by interacting with migrating neuroblasts that share the same route. Contact with a neuroblast significantly enhances OPC motility, even in the absence of external scaffolds such as blood vessels or radial glial fibers, indicating that the neuroblast itself acts as a migratory substrate for the OPC.
Super-resolution live imaging further reveals that these heterotypic interactions are mediated by punctate adherens junctions that form and dissolve dynamically as the two cell types move together, and transmission electron microscopy confirms these contacts as bona fide adherens junctions with electron-dense plaques. Rather than a stable, continuous attachment, the contact between OPC and neuroblast is discontinuous and constantly remodeled, allowing the pair to advance cooperatively toward the site of damage.
Together, these findings uncover a previously unrecognized mechanism in which transient, dynamic adherens junctions support cooperative migration between neuronal and glial progenitors, facilitating the efficient recruitment of OPCs to injured brain tissue.
This work was led by Yuriko Sobu and Nodoka Ito in the laboratories of Kazunobu Sawamoto (Nagoya City University) and Naoko Kaneko (Doshisha University), to whom the main credit for this project belongs. We have been collaborating with them for more than a decade and are truly grateful to be part of this work.
Reference Sobu Y, Ito N, Ko Uy EW, Hashimoto M, Kuboyama K, Akazawa C, Shibata S, Takebayashi H, Okano H, Herranz-Pérez V, Sawamoto K, Kaneko N. Dynamic interactions with neuroblasts promote oligodendrocyte progenitor migration to injured cortex. iScience 29, 117318 (2026). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2026.117318