TY - JOUR
T1 - Cognitive impairments induced by concussive mild traumatic brain injury in mouse are ameliorated by treatment with phenserine via multiple non-cholinergic and cholinergic mechanisms
AU - Tweedie, David
AU - Fukui, Koji
AU - Li, Yazhou
AU - Yu, Qian Sheng
AU - Barak, Shani
AU - Tamargo, Ian A.
AU - Rubovitch, Vardit
AU - Holloway, Harold W.
AU - Lehrmann, Elin
AU - Wood, William H.
AU - Zhang, Yongqing
AU - Becker, Kevin G.
AU - Perez, Evelyn
AU - Van Praag, Henriette
AU - Luo, Yu
AU - Hoffer, Barry J.
AU - Becker, Robert E.
AU - Pick, Chaim G.
AU - Greig, Nigel H.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.
PY - 2016/6
Y1 - 2016/6
N2 - Traumatic brain injury (TBI), often caused by a concussive impact to the head, affects an estimated 1.7 million Americans annually. With no approved drugs, its pharmacological treatment represents a significant and currently unmet medical need. In our prior development of the anti-cholinesterase compound phenserine for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders, we recognized that it also possesses non-cholinergic actions with clinical potential. Here, we demonstrate neuroprotective actions of phenserine in neuronal cultures challenged with oxidative stress and glutamate excitotoxicity, two insults of relevance to TBI. These actions translated into amelioration of spatial and visual memory impairments in a mouse model of closed head mild TBI (mTBI) two days following cessation of clinically translatable dosing with phenserine (2.5 and 5.0 mg/kg BID x 5 days initiated post mTBI) in the absence of anti-cholinesterase activity. mTBI elevated levels of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), a marker of oxidative stress. Phenserine counteracted this by augmenting homeostatic mechanisms to mitigate oxidative stress, including superoxide dismutase [SOD] 1 and 2, and glutathione peroxidase [GPx], the activity and protein levels of which were measured by specific assays. Microarray analysis of hippocampal gene expression established that large numbers of genes were exclusively regulated by each individual treatment with a substantial number of them co-regulated between groups. Molecular pathways associated with lipid peroxidation were found to be regulated by mTBI, and treatment of mTBI animals with phenserine effectively reversed injury-induced regulations in the 'Blalock Alzheimer's Disease Up' pathway. Together these data suggest that multiple phenserine-associated actions underpin this compound's ability to ameliorate cognitive deficits caused by mTBI, and support the further evaluation of the compound as a therapeutic for TBI.
AB - Traumatic brain injury (TBI), often caused by a concussive impact to the head, affects an estimated 1.7 million Americans annually. With no approved drugs, its pharmacological treatment represents a significant and currently unmet medical need. In our prior development of the anti-cholinesterase compound phenserine for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders, we recognized that it also possesses non-cholinergic actions with clinical potential. Here, we demonstrate neuroprotective actions of phenserine in neuronal cultures challenged with oxidative stress and glutamate excitotoxicity, two insults of relevance to TBI. These actions translated into amelioration of spatial and visual memory impairments in a mouse model of closed head mild TBI (mTBI) two days following cessation of clinically translatable dosing with phenserine (2.5 and 5.0 mg/kg BID x 5 days initiated post mTBI) in the absence of anti-cholinesterase activity. mTBI elevated levels of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), a marker of oxidative stress. Phenserine counteracted this by augmenting homeostatic mechanisms to mitigate oxidative stress, including superoxide dismutase [SOD] 1 and 2, and glutathione peroxidase [GPx], the activity and protein levels of which were measured by specific assays. Microarray analysis of hippocampal gene expression established that large numbers of genes were exclusively regulated by each individual treatment with a substantial number of them co-regulated between groups. Molecular pathways associated with lipid peroxidation were found to be regulated by mTBI, and treatment of mTBI animals with phenserine effectively reversed injury-induced regulations in the 'Blalock Alzheimer's Disease Up' pathway. Together these data suggest that multiple phenserine-associated actions underpin this compound's ability to ameliorate cognitive deficits caused by mTBI, and support the further evaluation of the compound as a therapeutic for TBI.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84973635846&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0156493
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0156493
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C2 - 27254111
AN - SCOPUS:84973635846
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 11
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 6
M1 - e0156493
ER -