Infiltration of circulating myeloid cells through CD95L contributes to neurodegeneration in mice
16.03.2015
Gao L, Brenner D, Llorens-Bobadilla E, Saiz-Castro G, Frank T, Wieghofer P, Hill O, Thiemann M, Karray S, Prinz M, Weishaupt JH, Martin-Villalba A.
J Exp Med. 2015;212(4):469-80.
Neuroinflammation is increasingly recognized as a hallmark of neurodegeneration. Activated central nervous system-resident microglia and infiltrating immune cells contribute to the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons (DNs). However, how the inflammatory process leads to neuron loss and whether blocking this response would be beneficial to disease progression remains largely unknown. We show that DN death is not mediated by CD95- induced apoptosis because deletion of CD95 in DNs does not influence MPTP-induced neurodegeneration. Altogether, this study emphasizes the role of the peripheral innate immune response in neurodegeneration and identifies CD95 as potential pharmacological target for neurodegenerative disease.
