doi:10.1369/jhc.5A6805.2005
Volume 54 (4): 457-465, 2006 Copyright ©The Histochemical Society, Inc. Intrastriatal Infusion of Liver Growth Factor Stimulates Dopamine Terminal Sprouting and Partially Restores Motor Function in 6-Hydroxydopamine-lesioned Rats
Servicio de Neurobiología, Hospital Ramón y Cajal, Madrid, Spain (DR,ASH,MVTL,CLP,RA,MJA,RG-G,EB); Servicio de Bioquímica Experimental, Hospital Puerta de Hierro, Madrid, Spain (JJD-G); and Departamento de Biología Celular y Genética, Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain (MVTL) Correspondence to: Dr. Eulalia Bazán, Servicio de NeurobiologíaInvestigacíon, Hospital Ramón y Cajal, Carretera de Colmenar Km. 9.1, 28034 Madrid, España. E-mail: eulalia.bazan{at}hrc.es
Liver growth factor (LGF) is a mitogen for liver cells that shows biological activity in extrahepatic sites and may be useful for neuroregenerative therapies. The aim of this work was to investigate the effects of the intrastriatal (IS) infusion of LGF in the 6-hydroxydopamine rat model of Parkinson's disease. Tyrosine hydroxylase-positive innervation was significantly increased in the dopamine-denervated striatum of rats receiving intrastriatal LGF infusions (160 ng/day/rat x15 days) as compared with a vehicle-infused group. There was no evidence of dopaminergic neurogenesis in the striatum or substantia nigra in any experimental group at the times studied. However, in those animals undergoing IS-LGF infusion for 48 hr, we found a significant increase in both microglial proliferation and in the number of microglial cells that acquired the ameboid morphology. This is characteristic of activated microglia/macrophages that has been reported to play an important role in dopamine terminal sprouting. In summary, our study shows that IS infusion of LGF stimulates the outgrowth of tyrosine hydroxylase-positive terminals in the striatum of 6-hydroxydopamine-treated rats. As apomorphine-induced rotational behavior was also reduced in these animals, we propose LGF as a novel factor that, when delivered to the striatum, may be useful in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. (J Histochem Cytochem 54:457465, 2006)
Key Words: neuroregeneration neurogenesis trophic factors dopamine Parkinson's disease liver growth factor microglia
PARKINSON'S DISEASE (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder involving a progressive loss of dopaminergic (DA) neurons projecting from the substantia nigra (SN) to the striatum. The most widely used therapeutic approach is the administration of levodopa, but it loses effectiveness after several years of treatment. Neurotrophic factors are compounds that enhance the survival and differentiation of selected types of neurons and, therefore, are considered promising therapeutic agents for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders characterized by selective degeneration of certain neuronal groups (Garcia de Yebenes and Mena 2000
Liver growth factor (LGF), a hepatic mitogen with both in vivo and in vitro activity, was purified by our group some years ago (Diaz-Gil et al. 1986 In the present study we report that intrastriatal (IS) infusion of LGF stimulated the outgrowth of DA terminals in the striatum of unilaterally 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA)-lesioned rats, as measured by tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) immunostaining. Moreover, IS-LGF partially reduced apomorphine-induced rotational behavior in these animals. The role of activated microglia/macrophages as mediators of LGF-induced DA fiber sprouting is discussed.
LGF Purification LGF was purified from rat serum following a previously reported procedure (Diaz-Gil et al. 1994
Animals and 6-OHDA Lesion Surgery To minimize variability due to the degradation of the toxin, the 6-OHDA solutions were freshly prepared, kept on ice, and protected from exposure to light.
Rotational Behavior
Factor Infusion Pumps were designed for infusion over 15 days at a rate of 0.5 µl/hr. The solution consisted of rat albumin at 100 µg/ml in 0.9% saline in vehicle groups. LGF or bFGF, at a dose of 160 ng/day/rat, was added to the vehicle solution. The minipumps were filled with 200 µl of the corresponding solution and incubated overnight in normal saline at 37C. The 4.5-mm cannula attached to the minipump was stereotaxically implanted into the left striatum (AP +0.5; ML +3.5; DV 4.5) or left ventricle (AP 0.8, ML +1.4 DV 4.5) using bregma as a reference, and DV coordinates were calculated from the surface of the skull. The tooth bar was set at 3.0 mm. The minipump was placed into a subcutaneous pocket slightly posterior to the scapula. Six weeks after the unilateral 6-OHDA lesion, animals were divided according to the infused brain area and infusion solution as follows: IS-LGF infusion (n=14), IS-bFGF infusion (n=5), and IS-vehicle (n=11); ICV-LGF infusion (n=10), ICV bFGF infusion (n=5); and ICV-vehicle (n=9). Animals in the lesion-control group (n=9) did not undergo minipump implantation and were sacrificed 6 weeks postlesion. To determine whether the intracerebral infusion of LGF increased the proliferation of new neurons in the striatum and the SN, animals were injected daily for 2 weeks with the mitotic marker bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) (50 mg/kg IP), starting 7 days after the beginning of infusion.
Tissue Processing
Antibodies and Immunochemicals
Immunohistochemistry Anti-PCNA, -TH, -BrdU, and -vimentin antibodies were visualized by means of an immunofluorescence procedure, using appropriate fluorochrome-conjugated secondary antibodies directed against the species in which the primary antibody was raised. The slides were coverslipped in a medium containing p-phenylenediamine and bisbenzimide (Hoechst 33342; Sigma) for detection of nuclei.
Immunohistochemical Detection of Isolectin IB4
Morphometric Analysis
Statistical Analysis
Effects of LGF on TH-positive Innervation To evaluate the degree of degeneration of the nigrostriatal DA projection prior to LGF infusion, a lesion-control group (n=9) was sacrificed 6 weeks postlesion. Immunohistochemical analysis of coronal sections at two different levels of the striatum demonstrated that striata from unilaterally 6-OHDA-lesioned rats contained no TH-positive neurons, and only 5.5 ± 1.9% of the structure corresponding to the ventral-most region of the striatum showed TH-positive innervation. IS infusion of LGF for 15 days in 6-OHDA-lesioned rats increased TH-positive innervation in the ventromedial and central regions of the striatum and around the site of the infusion cannula (Figures 1A 1F). The effect seen at the striatal level corresponding to the infusion site (Figure 2A ) in the IS-LGF group differed significantly from that found in the vehicle and lesioncontrol animals and was not observed in animals receiving IS infusions of bFGF (Figure 2A). On the other hand, ICV infusion of LGF slightly increased TH-positive innervation in the striatum, but similar changes were observed in vehicle and ICV-bFGF-treated animals (Figure 2B).
Newly generated dopamine neurons may contribute to the observed increase in striatal TH-positive innervation. Double immunostaining showed very few ß-tubulin III-positive/BrdU-positive cells in the ipsilateral and contralateral striatum of vehicle and LGF-infused animals (data not shown). However, the IS-LGF and IS-vehicle groups and the ICV-LGF-infused animals showed no TH-positive neurons in the striatum. In the SN, a few DA neurons remained in the 6-OHDA-lesioned side as compared with the contralateral SN (Figures 1G and 1H). IS infusion of LGF did not affect the total number of TH-positive neurons in the SN when compared with vehicle or lesion-control animals (Figure 2C). In addition, although a few BrdU-positive nuclei were observed in the SN, none of the TH-positive neurons incorporated BrdU in either the ipsilateral or contralateral side of the structure. Similarly, no TH-positive/BrdU-positive neurons were observed in the SN of ICV-LGF-infused animals.
IS-LGF Infusion Stimulated Proliferation of Microglia in the Striatum
Other cell types were also proliferating around the infusion site in the striatum. Some PCNA-positive cells colabeled with nestin, a neurofilament expressed by reactive astrocytes (Figure 3C), and a few were vimentin positive (data not shown). In addition, PCNA-positive cells were located within the blood vessel walls and showed the typical flat morphology of endothelial cells (Figure 3C, Insert). However, no significant differences were observed between the IS-vehicle- and the IS-LGF-infused animals in the number of these cell types.
IS-LGF Infusion Partially Restored Motor Function
In the present study we show for the first time that IS infusion of LGF significantly increases TH-positive innervation in the striatum of unilaterally 6-OHDA-lesioned rats. Moreover, IS-LGF treatment partially reduces apomorphine-induced rotational behavior in these animals. We also suggest that LGF stimulates the sprouting of dopamine terminals through the activation of microglia/macrophages in the striatum.
Many studies have reported that intracerebral administration of trophic factors increases neurogenesis in undamaged (Craig et al. 1996
The delivery of LGF to the striatum may protect nigral DA neurons from cell death, as has been reported for glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) and VEGF in 6-OHDA-lesioned rats (Kirik et al. 2001
Under our experimental conditions, IS-bFGF neither improved TH-positive innervation nor reduced apomorphine-induced rotational behavior. Other studies showed that IS-bFGF increases TH expression and activity in the striatum of 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP)-lesioned mice (Otto and Unsicker 1990
The ICV-vehicle group, as well as the ICV-LGF and ICV-bFGF animals, presented TH-positive fibers in
An important issue was to determine the target cell and the molecular effectors that mediate LGF-induced dopamine fiber outgrowth in 6-OHDA-lesioned rats. As our results show, IS infusion of LGF significantly increased the number of PCNA-positive cells. About 60% of these cells were also positive for isolectin IB4 and some were positive for vimentin. Proliferation is part of the activation response of microglia, and vimentin expression serves as a marker for activated states of these cells (Graeber et al. 1988
LGF activity is mediated by the upregulation of TNF
In summary, our study shows that IS infusion of LGF stimulates the sprouting of TH-positive terminals in the striatum of DA-denervated rats. DA sprouting seems to be mediated by microglia, which may be activated by the cytokine TNF
This work was funded by the Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias (FISS PI02/0853 and FISS PI03/0648) and Fundación MAPFRE MEDICINA. R.A. was the recipient of a Fundación MAPFRE MEDICINA fellowship. We are grateful to Dr. Justo García de Yébenes (Servicio de Neurología, Hospital Ramón y Cajal, Madrid, Spain) for comments and critical reading of the manuscript. We also thank Mr. Santiago López and Miss Macarena Rodríguez for technical help and Mrs. Martha Messman for excellent correction of the manuscript.
1 These authors contributed equally to this work. Received for publication August 4, 2005; accepted November 19, 2005
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