Hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) affects 2-3 per 1000 full-term neonates. Up to 75% of newborns with severe HIE die or have severe neurological handicaps. Stem cell therapy offers the potential to replace HIE-damaged cells and enhances the autoregeneration process. Our laboratory implanted Multipotent Astrocytic Stem Cells (MASCs) into a neonatal rat model of hypoxia-ischemia (HI) and demo...

Neurotrophins were christened in consideration of their actions on the nervous system and, for a long time, they were the exclusive interest of neuroscientists. However, more recently, this family of proteins has been shown to possess essential cardiovascular functions. During cardiovascular development, neurotrophins and their receptors are essential factors in the formation of the heart and c...

Although the effects of neurotrophins on survival and differentiation of various neuronal populations have been well studied, little is known about their role in synaptic development and function. We have investigated the long-term effects of neurotrophins in the maturation of neuromuscular synapses in Xenopus nerve-muscle cocultures. BDNF and NT-3, but not NGF, elicited significant changes in ...

BACKGROUND Stem cells from Human Exfoliated Deciduous teeth (SHED) have the capability to differentiate into neural cells. Neurotrophins including Nerve Growth Factor (NGF), Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), neurotrophin-3 (NT-3), and neurotrophin-4 (NT-4) have neurogenesis, neurotrophic, or neuroprotective effects and are expressed in developing teeth. The aim of this study was to meas...

Neurotrophins are recognized widely as essential factors in the developing nervous system. Previously, we demonstrated that neurotrophin 3 activation of TrkC inhibits Schwann cell myelination and enhances the migration of primary Schwann cells through the signaling pathway regulated by the Rho GTPases Rac1 and Cdc42. Here, we show that neurotrophins activate divergent signaling pathways to prom...

Despite considerable evidence that neuronal activity influences the organization and function of circuits in the developing and adult brain, the molecular signals that translate activity into structural and functional changes in connections remain largely obscure. This review discusses the evidence implicating neurotrophins as molecular mediators of synaptic and morphological plasticity. Neurot...

Neurotrophins are important in inflammation. In an article in Arthritis Research & Therapy, Barthel and collaborators give new information on the existence of neurotrophin production in the synovial tissue of arthritic joints. These findings, together with other recent findings, stress that neurotrophins should be considered important factors in arthritis. This is reinforced by the facts that t...

Neurotrophins have been proposed to mediate several forms of activity-dependent competition in the central nervous system. A key element of such hypotheses is that neurotrophins act preferentially on active neurons; however, little direct evidence supports this postulate. We therefore examined, in ferret cortical brain slices, the interactions between activity and neurotrophins in regulating de...

Neurotrophins can mediate survival or death of neurons. Opposing functions of neurotrophins are based on binding of these ligands to two distinct types of receptors: trk receptors and p75NTR. Previous work showed that target-derived NGF induces cell death, whereas BDNF and NT-3 enhance survival of neurons in the isthmo-optic nucleus of avian embryos. To determine the fate of retrogradely transp...