J Neuroimmune Pharmacol
April 2025
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is the leading inflammatory and non-traumatic cause of disability in young adults, with late-onset MS emerging in middle-aged patients often resulting in poorer treatment responses and worse prognoses. The calcium-binding protein S100B is elevated in MS patients, and its targeting has shown promise in reducing disease severity in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) models. However, most studies on MS pathology have focused on young animal models, leaving a gap in understanding the effects of age and S100B ablation on disease progression throughout the lifespan.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlzheimer's disease (AD) is the most prevalent neurodegenerative disorder, as approximately 55 million people worldwide are affected, with a significant tendency to increase. It reveals three main pathological features: amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, and neuroinflammation, responsible for the neurodegenerative changes that slowly lead to deterioration of personality and cognitive control. Over a century after the first case report, effective treatments remain elusive, likely due to an incomplete understanding of the precise mechanisms driving its pathogenesis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Neuroinflammation
December 2024
Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a neuroinflammatory disease of the central nervous system, is one of the commonest causes of non-traumatic disability among young adults. Impaired cognition arises as an impactful symptom affecting more than 50% of the patients and with substantial impact on social, economic, and individual wellbeing. Despite the lack of therapeutic strategies, many efforts have been made to understand the mechanisms behind cognitive impairment in MS patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecent advances in understanding Alzheimer's disease (AD) suggest the possibility of an infectious etiology, with Porphyromonas gingivalis emerging as a prime suspect in contributing to AD. P. gingivalis may invade systemic circulation via weakened oral/intestinal barriers and then cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB), reaching the brain and precipitating AD pathology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiochim Biophys Acta Mol Basis Dis
December 2024
• Autosomal recessive spastic ataxia of Charlevoix-Saguenay (ARSACS) is a rare disorder caused by loss-of-function mutations in the sacsin chaperone. • Sacsin was initially described as a neuronal protein but is also found in astroglia and microglia. • We developed and characterized a new microglial cell model of ARSACS based on human HMC3 cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Cell Neurosci
November 2023
Obesity is a global epidemic, affecting roughly 30% of the world's population and predicted to rise. This disease results from genetic, behavioral, societal, and environmental factors, leading to excessive fat accumulation, due to insufficient energy expenditure. The adipose tissue, once seen as a simple storage depot, is now recognized as a complex organ with various functions, including hormone regulation and modulation of metabolism, inflammation, and homeostasis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Mol Neurosci
February 2023
History is full of women who made enormous contributions to science. While there is little to no imbalance at the early career stage, a decreasing proportion of women is found as seniority increases. In the multiple sclerosis (MS) field, 44% of first authors and only 35% of senior authors were female.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder associated with neuron-glia dysfunction and dysregulated miRNAs. We previously reported upregulated miR-124/miR-21 in AD neurons and their exosomes. However, their glial distribution, phenotypic alterations and exosomal spread are scarcely documented.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicroglia-associated inflammation and miRNA dysregulation are key players in Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathophysiology. Previously, we showed miR-124 upregulation in APP Swedish SH-SY5Y (SWE) and PSEN1 iPSC-derived neurons and its propagation by the secretome (soluble and exosomal fractions). After modulation with miR-124 mimic/inhibitor, we identified common responsive mechanisms between such models.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudies have correlated excessive S100B, a small inflammatory molecule, with demyelination and associated inflammatory processes occurring in multiple sclerosis. The relevance of S100B in multiple sclerosis pathology brought an emerging curiosity highlighting its use as a potential therapeutic target to reduce damage during the multiple sclerosis course, namely during inflammatory relapses. We examined the relevance of S100B and further investigated the potential of S100B-neutralizing small-molecule pentamidine in chronic experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common cause of age-associated dementia, is estimated to increase over the next decades. Evidence suggests neuro-immune signaling deregulation and risk genes beyond the amyloid-β (Aβ) deposition in AD pathology. We examined the temporal profile of inflammatory mediators and microglia deactivation/activation in the brain cortex and hippocampus of 3xTg-AD mice at 3- and 9-month-old.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMultiple sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating disease of the central nervous system that is characterized by the presence of demyelinated regions with accumulated myelin lipid debris. Importantly, to allow effective remyelination, such debris must be cleared by microglia. Therefore, the study of microglial activity with sensitive tools is of great interest to better monitor the MS clinical course.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeuronal miRNA dysregulation may have a role in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD). miRNA(miR)-124 is largely abundant and a critical player in many neuronal functions. However, the lack of models reliably recapitulating AD pathophysiology hampers our understanding of miR-124's role in the disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtracellular vesicles (EVs) are important players for intercellular communication. EVs are secreted by almost all cell types; they can transfer information between nearby or distant cells, and they are highly abundant in body fluids. In this review, we describe the general characteristics of EVs, as well as isolation and characterization approaches.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci
January 2022
The experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) model is the most commonly used animal model of multiple sclerosis (MS). However, phenotypic characterization of mice based on the traditional 5-point clinical paralysis scale does not fully capture disease progression. The frailty index (FI) conceptualizes frailty as the accumulation of health deficits and it is widely used to assess overall health in aging humans and preclinical models.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMultiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative disease associated with inflammatory demyelination and astroglial activation, with neuronal and axonal damage as the leading factors of disability. We aimed to perform a meta-analysis to determine changes in CSF levels of neuronal and glial biomarkers, including neurofilament light chain (NFL), total tau (t-tau), chitinase-3-like protein 1 (CHI3L1), glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), and S100B in various groups of MS (MS versus controls, clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) versus controls, CIS versus MS, relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) versus progressive MS (PMS), and MS in relapse versus remission. According to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, we included 64 articles in the meta-analysis, including 4071 subjects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWidely used reagents in the peptide functionalization toolbox, Michael acceptors and N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) activated esters, are combined in NHS-activated acrylamides for efficient chemoselective amino-sulfhydryl stapling on native peptides and proteins. NHS-activated acrylamides allow for a fast functionalization of N-terminal cysteines (k =1.54±0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMult Scler Relat Disord
January 2021
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a complex chronic immune disease in the central nervous system, causing neurological disability among young and middle-aged adults. Impaired cognition is now emerging as a major clinical symptom being present in more than 50% of MS patients. Recent data support that neuroinflammation mediated by glial cells plays a key part in MS course and, particularly, microglia is responsible for the pruning of synapses possibly impacting on vital neural networks maintenance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Cell Neurosci
September 2020
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common autoimmune and demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS), characterized, in the majority of cases, by initial relapses that later evolve into progressive neurodegeneration, severely impacting patients' motor and cognitive functions. Despite the availability of immunomodulatory therapies effective to reduce relapse rate and slow disease progression, they all failed to restore CNS myelin that is necessary for MS full recovery. Microglia are the primary inflammatory cells present in MS lesions, therefore strongly contributing to demyelination and lesion extension.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFN-Ethylhexedrone (NEH) and buphedrone (Buph) are emerging synthetic cathinones (SC) with limited information about their detrimental effects within central nervous system. Objectives: To distinguish mice behavioural changes by NEH and Buph and validate their differential harmful impact on human neurons and microglia. In vivo safety data showed the typical induced behaviour of excitation and stereotypies with 4-64 mg/kg, described for other SC.
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