Organotypic Brain Cultures: A Framework for Studying CNS Infection by Neurotropic Viruses and Screening Antiviral Drugs

, 2016 ). Based on our previous work, we propose here an optimized method to prepare OBC of hippocampi and cerebellums which are suitable for small rodent models based virus studies, including mice, rats as well as hamsters at a post-natal stage, between P6 to P10. We notably took into account the stress of the slice procedure on the tissue and the subsequent cellular reactions, which is essential to fully characterize the model prior to any use in infectious conditions. With this knowledge, we propose a protocol highlighting the requirements, including potential trouble shootings of the slicing parameters, to consider the variations we observed according to the structure and animal studied. This framework should facilitate the use of OBC for better conclusive studies of neurotropic viruses.