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Acetylcholine receptors from human muscle as pharmacological targets for ALS therapy.

ABSTRACT: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease affecting motor neurons that leads to progressive paralysis of skeletal muscle. Studies of ALS have revealed defects in expression of acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) in skeletal muscle that occur even in the absence of motor neuron anomalies. The endocannabinoid palmitoylethanolamide (PEA) modified the clinical conditions in one ALS patient, improving muscle force and respiratory efficacy. By microtransplanting muscle membranes from selected ALS patients into Xenopus oocytes, we show that PEA reduces the desensitization of acetylcholine-evoked currents after repetitive neurotransmitter application (i.e., rundown). The same effect was observed using muscle samples from denervated (non-ALS) control patients. The expression of human recombinant ?1?1?? (?-AChRs) and ?1?1?? AChRs (?-AChRs) in Xenopus oocytes revealed that PEA selectively affected the rundown of ACh currents in ?-AChRs. A clear up-regulation of the ?1 subunit in muscle from ALS patients compared with that from non-ALS patients was found by quantitative PCR, but no differential expression was found for other subunits. Clinically, ALS patients treated with PEA showed a lower decrease in their forced vital capacity (FVC) over time as compared with untreated ALS patients, suggesting that PEA can enhance pulmonary function in ALS. In the present work, data were collected from a cohort of 76 ALS patients and 17 denervated patients. Our results strengthen the evidence for the role of skeletal muscle in ALS pathogenesis and pave the way for the development of new drugs to hamper the clinical effects of the disease.

SUBMITTER: Palma E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4801305 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Acetylcholine receptors from human muscle as pharmacological targets for ALS therapy.

Palma Eleonora E Reyes-Ruiz Jorge Mauricio JM Lopergolo Diego D Roseti Cristina C Bertollini Cristina C Ruffolo Gabriele G Cifelli Pierangelo P Onesti Emanuela E Limatola Cristina C Miledi Ricardo R Inghilleri Maurizio M

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20160229 11

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease affecting motor neurons that leads to progressive paralysis of skeletal muscle. Studies of ALS have revealed defects in expression of acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) in skeletal muscle that occur even in the absence of motor neuron anomalies. The endocannabinoid palmitoylethanolamide (PEA) modified the clinical conditions in one ALS patient, improving muscle force and respiratory efficacy. By microtransplanting muscle membranes f ...[more]

PMID: 26929355

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Project description:Introduction: Pediatric adamantinomatous craniopharyngioma (ACP) is a histologically benign but clinically aggressive brain tumor that arises from the sellar/suprasellar region. Despite a high survival rate with current surgical and radiation therapy (75-95% at 10 years), ACP is associated with debilitating visual, endocrine, neurocognitive and psychological morbidity, resulting in exceptionally poor quality of life for survivors. Identification of an effective pharmacological therapy would drastically decrease morbidity and improve long term outcomes for children with ACP. Results: Using microarray analysis of 15 ACP patient samples, we have found several pharmaceutical targets that are significantly and consistently overexpressed in our panel of ACP relative to other pediatric brain tumors, pituitary tumors, normal pituitary and normal brain tissue. Among the most highly expressed are several targets of the kinase inhibitor dasatinib -- LCK, EPHA2 and SRC; EGFR pathway targets -- AREG, EGFR and ERBB3; and other potentially actionable cancer targets -- SHH, MMP9 and MMP12. We confirm by Western blot that a subset of these targets is highly expressed in ACP primary tumor samples. Discussion: We report here the first microarray gene expression analysis for ACP and the identification of targets for rational therapy. Experimental drugs targeting each of these gene products are currently being tested clinically and pre-clinically for the treatment of other tumor types. This study provides a rationale for further pre-clinical and clinical studies of novel pharmacological treatments for ACP. Development of pre-clinical mouse and cell culture models for ACP will further enable the translation of these targets from the lab to the clinic. Gene expression profiles were generated from surgical tumor and normal brain samples (n=210) using Affymetrix HG-U133 Plus 2.0 chips. Gene expression profiles of adamantinomatous craniopharyngioma (ACP) were compared to a cohort of other tumor samples and normal brain tissues, and analyzed via gene set enrichment (GSEA analysis) and hierarchical clustering analysis to identify high expression of potential drug targets. The sample metadata and processed data for the complete dataset, which includes reanalysis of 23 Samples from GSE26966, 33 Samples from GSE35493, and 42 Samples from GSE50385, are linked below as supplementary files.

Dataset Information

Acetylcholine receptors from human muscle as pharmacological targets for ALS therapy.

Publications

Acetylcholine receptors from human muscle as pharmacological targets for ALS therapy.

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