Chapter category: Heat Shock Proteins
Heme Oxygenase as a Therapeutic Funnel in Nutritional Redox Homeostasis and Cellular Stress Response: Role of Acetylcarnitine
Heat Shock Proteins in Neural Cells
Edited by: Christiane Richter-LandsbergISBN: 0-387-39952-6
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Chapter authors:
Vittorio Calabrese, Giovanni Pennisi, Menotti Calvani, Annamaria Giuffrida, D. Allan Butterfield and Cesare Mancuso
Reduction of cellular expression and activity of antioxidant proteins and the consequent increase of oxidative stress are fundamental causes for both the aging processes and neurodegenerative diseases. Oxidative stress has been implicated in mechanisms leading to neuronal cell injury in various pathological states of the brain. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive disorder with cognitive and memory decline, speech loss, personality changes and synapse loss. Many approaches have been undertaken to understand AD, but the heterogeneity of the etiologic factors makes it difficult to define the clinically most important factor determining the onset and progression of the disease. There is now evidence to suggest that networks of responses exist in the brain to detect and control diverse forms of stress. This is accomplished by a complex network of the so-called longevity assurance processes, which are composed of several genes termed vitagenes. Among these, heat shock proteins form a highly conserved system responsible for the preservation and repair of the correct protein conformation. Recent studies have shown that the heat shock response contributes to establish a cytoprotective state in a wide variety of human diseases, including inflammation, cancer, aging and neurodegenerative disorders. Given the broad cytoprotective properties of the heat shock response there is now strong interest in discovering and developing pharmacological agents capable of inducing the heat shock response. Acetylcarnitine (LAC) is proposed as a therapeutic agent for several neurodegenerative disorders, and there is evidence that LAC may play a critical role as a modulator of cellular stress response in health and disease states. In the present review we discuss the role of the heme oxygenase pathway in cellular stress response. We then review the evidence for the role of acetylcarnitine in modulating redox-dependent mechanisms leading to up-regulation of vitagenes in brain, and hence potentiate brain stress tolerance.
Additional chapters from this book:
The Role of Heat Shock Proteins during Neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s Disease
Andreas Wyttenbach* and André Patrick Arrigo
A number of acute and chronic neurodegenerative conditions are associated by protein misfolding and aggregation of proteins within and outside cells. Misfolded proteins and protein aggregation are c...
Assembly of Protein Aggregates in Neurodegeneration: Mechanisms Linking the Ubiquitin/Proteasome Pathway and Chaperones
Sha-Ron Pierre, Vita Vernace, Zhiyou Wang and Maria E. Figueiredo-Pereira
In recent years, it has become increasingly evident that the majority of neurodegenerative disorders is associated with the aggregation and deposition of proteins in inclusion bodies. To avoid thi...
Heat Shock Proteins and the Regulation of Apoptosis
Una FitzGerald, Adrienne M. Gorman and Afshin Samali
Since the elucidation of their functions in protein folding and translocation, heat shock protein chaperones have been a target of research in all spheres of biomedicine. Within the last five years,...
The Role of Hsps in Neuronal Differentiation and Development
Kate Reed Herbert, Afshin Samali and Adrienne Gorman*
Heat shock proteins (Hsps) are expressed during development of the nervous system in a temporally and spatially controlled pattern that does not appear to be linked to activation of heat shock trans...
Heat Shock Proteins in Multiple Sclerosis
Celia F. Brosnan, Luca Battistini and Krzysztof Selmaj
In this review, we have addressed the possible contribution of heat shock proteins (HSP) to the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central ner...
Heme Oxygenase as a Therapeutic Funnel in Nutritional Redox Homeostasis and Cellular Stress Response: Role of Acetylcarnitine
Vittorio Calabrese, Giovanni Pennisi, Menotti Calvani, Annamaria Giuffrida, D. Allan Butterfield and Cesare Mancuso
Reduction of cellular expression and activity of antioxidant proteins and the consequent increase of oxidative stress are fundamental causes for both the aging processes and neurodegenerative diseases...
Heat Shock Proteins: Expression and Functional Roles in Nerve Cells and Glia
Christiane Richter-Landsberg
Heat shock proteins (HSPs) or so called stress proteins have multifunctional roles and are involved in many physiological processes, such as cell cycle control, cell proliferation, development, organi...
Small Heat Shock Proteins and the Cytoskeleton: Their Role in Inclusion Body Formation in Glial Cells
Christiane Richter-Landsberg and Olaf Goldbaum
The integrity of the cytoskeleton is an essential determinant for the function and survival of nerve cells and glia, and hence provides a sensitive target for stress situations. The small heat s...
