Introduction: Cell transplantation is one of the main strategies for spinal cord injury repair. As OECs of the olfactory mucosa can be obtained by simple biopsy in all individuals without affecting their smell sensation, OECs considered as a promising candidate for autologous transplantation in the nervous system injury, especially for spinal cord repair. Thereby in the current study OECs were cultured from olfactory mucosa of 7 days old rats' pups and their purity was examined by flow-cytometry after simultaneous double staining for p75 and GFAP markers.

Materials and methods: 7 days old Wistar rats' pups were deeply anesthetized by ketamine / xylazine (60/6mg/Kg). Then the nasal cavity was opened sagittally and the olfactory mucosa was separated from posterior part of nasal septum and at last OECs were obtained from lamina properia of olfactory mucosa and were cultured. The cultured cells were simultaneously immunolabeled for p75 and GFAP markers and finally purity of cultured cells assessed by flow-cytometry.

Results: cultured OECs demonstrated two different morphologies, a spindle shape Schwann-like and an astrocyte-like OECs with flat sheet-like morphology. In addition, simultaneous immunolabeling for p75 and GFAP markers of OECs exhibited   OECs were positive for both markers at the same time. The flow-cytometry results  displayed that 87.9±2.4% of cells were p75/ GFAP double positive cells,1.05±0.4 only p75 positive and 5.8±1.5% were single positive for GFAP.