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- Title
Apomorphine induces trophic factors that support fetal rat mesencephalic dopaminergic neurons in cultures.
- Authors
Guo, Hong; Tang, Zhongshu; Yu, Yi; Xu, Lei; Jin, Guozhang; Zhou, Jiawei
- Abstract
Abstract Apomorphine, the catechol-derived dopamine D1 /D2 receptor agonist, is currently in use as an antiparkinsonian drug. It has previously been reported that apomorphine was able to elicit expression of the enzyme tyrosine hydroxylase, a marker for DA neurons, in the fetal rat cerebrocortical cultures whilst in the presence of brain-derived neurotrophic factor. The present study demonstrated that treatment of fetal rat ventral mesencephalic cultures with apomorphine caused a marked increase in the number of dopaminergic neurons. The action of apomorphine can be mimicked by dopamine receptor (D1 and D2 ) agonists or blocked by preincubation with D1 /D2 receptor antagonists. Incubation of recipient mesencephalic cultures with the conditioned medium derived from apomorphine-stimulated donor mesencephalic cultures elicited a 3.72-fold increase in the number of TH-positive neurons. Increased mRNA expression levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor were also found in the apomorphine-treated mesencephalic cells along with concomitant protein expression increases in the conditioned medium. Moreover, the trophic activity observed could be partially neutralized by antibodies against either brain-derived neurotrophic factor or glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor. Cultured fetal striatal cells, but not hippocampal cells, also responded to apomorphine treatment. The membrane filtration studies revealed that both <30 kDa and >50 kDa fractions contained trophic activities. The latter characterization distinguishes them from most known neurotrophic factors. These results suggest that the apomorphine-modulated development of dopaminergic neurons may be mediated by activation of the dopamine receptor subtypes D1 and D2 thereby increasing the production of multiple growth factors.
- Subjects
DOPAMINERGIC neurons; APOMORPHINE
- Publication
European Journal of Neuroscience, 2002, Vol 16, Issue 10, p1861
- ISSN
0953-816X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1046/j.1460-9568.2002.02256.x