High-Resolution Confocal Imaging of Pericytes in Human Fetal Brain Microvessels

Pericytes are integral part of neurovascular unit and play a role in the maintenance of blood-brain barrier integrity, angiogenesis, and cerebral blood flow regulation. Despite their important functional roles, a univocal phenotypic identification is still emerging also for the lack of a "pan-pericyte" marker. In the present study, we describe in detail the method for performing fluorescence immunohistochemistry on thick free-floating sections from human fetal brain in high resolution laser confocal microscopy. This method enables to obtain three-dimensional images of pericytes and provides insights about their distribution and localization in the microvessels of human developing brain.