Participation of the CD44 receptor expressed in hippocampus in cognitive deficit of chronic stressed mice. Mechanisms involved in its modulation

MORONI ALEJANDRO; SPINELLI FIORELLA; GENARO AM; ALANIZ LAURA; PALUMBO ML

Patras

Workshop; FEBS Advanced Lecture Course Extracellular Matrix: Cell Regulation, Epigenetics and Modeling; 2018

Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS)

The hippocampus, an area involved in learning and memory, is sensitive to the effects of chronic stress. Previously, we found that female BALB/c mice exposed to chronic mild stress (CMS) model induced a cognitive deficit that was correlated with a decrease in adult neurogenesis and Th1/Th2 cytokines imbalance. Hyaluronic Acid (HA), a key component of the brain?s extracellular matrix, is the principal ligand of CD44 receptor. The HA plays an important role in physiological and pathological process, like neuronal development, synaptic plasticity (e. g. learning and memory), damage response and neurodegeneration. CD44 levels are increased in patients with Alzheimer?s disease and decreased in cerebrospinal fluid of depressed individuals. In this context, we propose to study the neuroimmune mechanisms that result in cognitive disorders after exposure to chronic stress. It is interesting to investigate if the expression of the CD44 receptor and its signaling are altered in the hippocampus in mice exposed to chronic stress. For this propose, we used female C57BL/6J WT and CD44-/- mice exposed or not to CMS. We found a decrease in learning and memory in CD44-/- CMS mice respect to WT and CD44-/- control mice in Y-maze (p