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The effects of a combination of antioxidants and essential fatty acids as treatment for Alzheimer’s disease in the mu-p75 saporin-injected model
Matchynski JJ, Lowrance SA, Rossignol J, Dekorver NW, Puckett ND, Pappas CA, Trainor KJ, Delongchamp JL, Radwan J, Heldt JC, Dey ND, Dunbar GL (2010) The effects of a combination of antioxidants and essential fatty acids as treatment for Alzheimer’s disease in the mu-p75 saporin-injected model. Neuroscience 2010 Abstracts 856.15/I21. Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA.
Summary: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that is marked by a progressive loss of memory and affects over five million people nationwide (Alzheimer’s Association, 2010). It is characterized by an increase in oxidative stress, amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, and the loss of cholinergic neurons. Mice injected with the ribosome deactivating protein, mu-p75 saporin, model the deficits in memory, loss of cholinergic neurons, and increased oxidative stress observed in AD. The current study aimed to decrease the deficits observed in the saporin mouse model using a combination of antioxidants from tart cherries and essential fatty acids, Cerise© total body rhythm (TBR). Mice dosed with TBR or methylcellulose were given bilateral ventricular injections of phosphate buffer saline or saporin. Memory and motor functioning were then measured in a series of behavioural tests. Results indicate that TBR decreased the memory deficits observed in object recognition, place recognition, and Morris-water-maze tasks, as well as the inflammatory response and loss of cholinergic neurons in the medial septum. The findings suggest that TBR could provide an effective, adjunctive treatment that may delay the onset or decrease the severity of AD.
Related Products: mu p75-SAP (Cat. #IT-16)
Krx-0501 reduces cognitive deficits in a saporin mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease
Lowrance SA, Matchynski JJ, Rossignol J, Dekorver N, Fink K, Salibi P, Dunbar GL (2010) Krx-0501 reduces cognitive deficits in a saporin mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Neuroscience 2010 Abstracts 856.8/I14. Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA.
Summary: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease marked by memory loss and dysfunction of cholinergic neurons. Neurotrophic factors, like nerve growth factor (NGF), have shown to improve cognitive function in AD patients. The inability of NGF to cross the blood brain barrier (BBB) and painful side effects have caused serious concerns over its future use as a treatment. Substituted pyrimidines, such as KRX-0501 (KRX; Keryx Biopharmaceuticals, New York, NY) on the other hand, readily cross the BBB and exert beneficial neurotrophic-like effects in vivo. In this study KRX was administered daily to mice that were given intra-cerebroventricular injections of mu p-75 Saporin (SAP; Advanced Targeting Systems, San Diego, CA) or vehicle (phosphate buffered saline). KRX treatment began at seven weeks of age and continued for 32 days. Doses were set at 10, 15, and 20mg/kg respectively. Animals were tested for cognitive impairment using the Morris water maze (MWM) task, object recognition (OR) and place recognition (PR) tasks while motor deficits were tested using MWM swim speed, rotarod (RR) and the open field (OF) tasks. On day 33 of KRX treatment, mice were sacrificed by transcardial perfusion. In a second experiment, mice received SAP or vehicle surgery and were sacrificed for enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) analysis. MWM results revealed significantly lower escape latencies of control animals relative to SAP animals. In addition mice treated with the low and middle doses of KRX displayed decreased escape latency on the MWM. In the OR task, only mice in the highest treatment group performed significantly above chance levels. No between group differences were seen in the PR task, swim speed, latency to fall from the RR, and distance travelled in the OF. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) using the glial fibrillary acidic protein antibody indicated that astrocyte activation took place primarily around the surgical injection sites. IHC labeling against choline-acetyltransferase revealed a significant decrease in cholinergic neurons of the medial septum. Finally, ELISA protein analysis of midbrain sections revealed that the KRX treatments did not increase levels of endogenous NGF. These results show that SAP injections produced a reproducible destruction of cholinergic neurons, accompanied by memory deficits in the MWM, in the absence of motoric deficits. The KRX treatment attenuated memory deficits, despite unabated cholinergic cell loss in the medial septum, and did so without affecting levels of endogenous NGF.
Related Products: mu p75-SAP (Cat. #IT-16)
Functional cholinergic neurons from human embryonic stem cells
Liu Y, Krencik R, Liu H, Ma L, Zhang X, Zhang S-C (2010) Functional cholinergic neurons from human embryonic stem cells. Neuroscience 2010 Abstracts 331.5/B19. Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA.
Summary: Basal forebrain cholinergic neurons play a critical role in regulating memory and cognition. Degeneration or dysfunction of these neurons is associated with neurological conditions including Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. In this study, we aimed at generating cholinergic neurons from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) for therapeutic development. hESCs were first differentiated to primitive neuroepithelial cells in a chemically defined medium. In the presence of sonic hedgehog, over 97% of the differentiated cells became Nkx2.1-expressing ventral forebrain progenitors. These ventral progenitors further differentiated to cholinergic neurons with basal forebrain characteristics by expressing ChAT, VAChAT, FoxG1, Nkx2.1, Islet1, ßIII-tubulin, MAP2, P75, Synapsin but not GABA, Glutamate, or Mash2. The hESC-generated cholinergic neurons were electrophysiologically active in vitro. Following transplantation into the hippocampus of mice, in which cholinergic neurons in the medial septum were destroyed by IgG-P75-saporin, the grafted human cells produced large cholinergic neurons. The animals transplanted with cholinergic neurons demonstrated an improvement in learning and memory deficit. These results indicate that the human stem cell-generated cholinergic neurons are functional, thus providing a new source for drug discovery and cell therapy for neurological disorders that affect cholinergic neurons.
Related Products: mu p75-SAP (Cat. #IT-16)
Efficacy of a murine-p75-saporin immunotoxin for selective lesions of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons in mice.
Nag N, Baxter MG, Berger-Sweeney JE (2009) Efficacy of a murine-p75-saporin immunotoxin for selective lesions of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons in mice. Neurosci Lett 452:247-251. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2009.01.006
Summary: The authors tested a new version of mu p75-SAP (Cat. #IT-16) in mice. Mice received bilateral injections of 0.65 or 1.3 µg of immunotoxin into each lateral ventricle. Both amounts produced a complete loss of cholinergic neurons in the medial septum, while a dose-dependent loss of cholinergic neurons was seen in the nucleus basalis magnocellularis.
Related Products: mu p75-SAP (Cat. #IT-16)
Amyloid-beta expression in retrosplenial cortex of triple transgenic mice: relationship to cholinergic axonal afferents from medial septum.
Robertson RT, Baratta J, Yu J, LaFerla FM (2009) Amyloid-beta expression in retrosplenial cortex of triple transgenic mice: relationship to cholinergic axonal afferents from medial septum. Neuroscience 164:1334-1346. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2009.09.024
Summary: In this work the authors developed a model to examine the relationship between afferent projections and the formation of amyloid-beta (Aβ) deposits. Mice received 1.86 µg unilateral injections of 192-IgG-SAP (Cat. #IT-01) into the lateral ventricle. Lesioned animals had persistent Aβ immunoreactivity in layer III of the granular division of retrosplenial cortex (RSg). This data indicates that septal cholinergic axonal projections transport Aβ or amyloid precursor protein to layer III of the RSg.
Related Products: 192-IgG-SAP (Cat. #IT-01), mu p75-SAP (Cat. #IT-16)
Intracerebroventricular injections of mu-P-75 saporin can produce memory deficits without impairing motor deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease.
Matchynski JJ, Lowrance S, Rossignol J, Puckett N, Derkorver N, Radwan J, Trainor K, Sandstrom M, Dunbar G (2009) Intracerebroventricular injections of mu-P-75 saporin can produce memory deficits without impairing motor deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Neuroscience 2009 Abstracts 528.1/H34. Society for Neuroscience, Chicago, IL.
Summary: Intracerebroventricular injections of mu-P-75 saporin (Advanced Targeting Systems, San Diego, CA) effectively and efficiently destroys cholinergic neurons and creates memory deficits in mice, mimicking some of the key symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Early attempts to use mu-P-75 saporin in mice required a relatively high mean effective dose (ED50) of 3.6 µg in order to create behavioral deficits (Berger-Sweeney et al., 2001, The Journal of Neuroscience, 21: 8164-8173; Hunter et al, 2004, European Journal of Neuroscience, 19: 3305-3316). Recent advances in producing the saporin have lowered the ED50 to doses to 0.4 µg, although the resulting memory deficits are transient, and doses above 0.8 µg can cause motor deficits (Moreau et al., 2008, Hippocampus, 18: 610-622). In an effort to elucidate the behavioral effects of a higher (0.8 µg) dose, we gave bilateral intracerbroventricular injections of mu-P-75 saporin (n=6) or sterile phosphate buffered saline (n=3) into C57/BL6 mice and assessed their cognitive abilities on both a Morris water maze (MWM) and an object-recognition task, while monitoring their motor abilities using a rotarod task. Mice receiving the mu-P-75 saporin performed significantly worse than sham animals on an object recognition task and tended to have longer latencies and swim paths during the seven days of MWM testing. Importantly, no between-group differences were observed for latency to fall on the rotarod task. Collectively, these results suggest that the 0.8 µg dose of saporin is both safe and effective for mimicking AD-like memory deficits, without causing significant motor deficits.
Related Products: mu p75-SAP (Cat. #IT-16)
Effect of voluntary running on adult hippocampal neurogenesis in cholinergic lesioned mice.
Ho NF, Han SP, Dawe GS (2009) Effect of voluntary running on adult hippocampal neurogenesis in cholinergic lesioned mice. BMC Neurosci 10:57. doi: 10.1186/1471-2202-10-57
Summary: The act of running can induce hippocampal neurogenesis. In this work the authors investigated whether running can offset the loss of septohippocamal cholinergic neurons caused by a lesion using mu p75-SAP (Cat. #IT-16). Mice received 3.6 µg of the toxin into each lateral ventricle. Although the number of surviving neurons was similar in both lesioned and control animals, most of the progenitor cells in the lesioned animals could not survive without cholinergic input.
Related Products: mu p75-SAP (Cat. #IT-16)
Segregated populations of hippocampal principal CA1 neurons mediating conditioning and extinction of contextual fear.
Tronson NC, Schrick C, Guzman YF, Huh KH, Srivastava DP, Penzes P, Guedea AL, Gao C, Radulovic J (2009) Segregated populations of hippocampal principal CA1 neurons mediating conditioning and extinction of contextual fear. J Neurosci 29:3387-3394. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5619-08.2009
Summary: This work examines what cell groups are responsible for controlling contextual fear. 180 ng of mu p75-SAP (Cat. #IT-16) was injected into the medial septum of mice. Saporin (Cat. #PR-01) was used as a control. In lesioned animals, fear extinction was lost along with the cholinergic input from the medial septum, while fear conditioning was left intact.
Related Products: mu p75-SAP (Cat. #IT-16), Saporin (Cat. #PR-01)
Featured Article: Selective lesion of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons in mice with the mu p75-saporin immunotoxin: Neuroanatomy and behavior
Moreau PH, Cosquer B, Jeltsch H, Cassel JC, Mathis C (2008) Featured Article: Selective lesion of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons in mice with the mu p75-saporin immunotoxin: Neuroanatomy and behavior. Targeting Trends 9(2)
Related Products: 192-IgG-SAP (Cat. #IT-01), mu p75-SAP (Cat. #IT-16)
Read the featured article in Targeting Trends.
See Also:
Neuroanatomical and behavioral effects of a novel version of the cholinergic immunotoxin mu p75-saporin in mice.
Moreau PH, Cosquer B, Jeltsch H, Cassel JC, Mathis C (2008) Neuroanatomical and behavioral effects of a novel version of the cholinergic immunotoxin mu p75-saporin in mice. Hippocampus 18(6):610-622. doi: 10.1002/hipo.20422
Summary: 192-IgG-SAP (Cat. #IT-01) has been used for over a decade to examine the cholinergic system in the basal forebrain of rats. Establishing the same reagent for mice has been problematic. Here the authors describe the use of a mouse-specific lesioning agent, mu p75-SAP (Cat. #IT-16). After deciding on a dosage of 0.4 µg administered in the form of bilateral intracerebroventricular injections, mice were lesioned and tested. Lesioned animals displayed increased locomotor activity, and spatial learning and memory deficits, with minimal side effects.
Related Products: mu p75-SAP (Cat. #IT-16), 192-IgG-SAP (Cat. #IT-01)