Region-specific astrocytes exert differential neuroprotection in an in vitro model of Huntington's disease

JULIETA SABA; FEDERICO LÓPEZ COUSELO; JUAN TURATI; LILA CARNIGLIA; DANIELA DURAND; MERCEDES LASAGA; CARLA CARUSO

Mar del Plata

Congreso; LXIV Reunión Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Clínica (SAIC); 2019

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Clínica (SAIC)

Evidence shows that there is significant heterogeneity in astrocytes, regarding morphology, gene expression and function. In this work, we investigated the action of astrocytes from two areas involved in Huntington?s disease (HD): the striatum and the cortex. We have previously demonstrated that BDNF exerts protective and antioxidant effects on astrocytes treated with 3-nitropropionic acid (3-NP), a toxin widely used to model HD in vitro. First, we determined TrkB expression and ERK activation in cortical and striatal cultured primary rat astrocytes treated with BDNF (50 ng/ml) + 3NP (15mM) for 24 h. We showed before that cultured astrocytes do not express TrkB-full length (TrkB-FL) protein; therefore TrkB-truncated (T1) isoform expression was assessed by Western blot. In cortical and striatal astrocytes BDNF and BDNF + 3-NP increased protein expression of TrkB-T1 expression (p