Small Extracellular Vesicles Secreted by Nigrostriatal Astrocytes Rescue Cell Death and Preserve Mitochondrial Function in Parkinson's Disease.

ABSTRACT: Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are emerging as powerful players in cell-to-cell communication both in healthy and diseased brain. In Parkinson's disease (PD)-characterized by selective dopaminergic neuron death in ventral midbrain (VMB) and degeneration of their terminals in striatum (STR)-astrocytes exert dual harmful/protective functions, with mechanisms not fully elucidated. Here, this study shows that astrocytes from the VMB-, STR-, and VMB/STR-depleted brains release a population of small EVs  in a region-specific manner. Interestingly, VMB-astrocytes secreted the highest rate of EVs, which is further exclusively increased in response to CCL3, a chemokine that promotes robust dopaminergic neuroprotection in different PD models. The neuroprotective potential of nigrostriatal astrocyte-EV

SUBMITTER: Leggio L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11468249 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature