Cannabinoids, the active components of marijuana and their endogenous counterparts, act on the brain and many other organs through the widely expressed CB1 cannabinoid receptor. In contrast, the CB2 cannabinoid receptor is abundant in the immune system and shows a restricted expression pattern in brain cells. CB2-selective agonists are, therefore, very attractive therapeutic agents as they do n...

Proper development of the mammalian brain requires that neural progenitor cells balance self-renewal and differentiation under precise temporal and spatial regulation, but the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. In this study, we identify Ga subunit as a positive regulator of mammalian neurogenesis, working with the regulator of G protein signaling (RGS)-mediated ephrin-B signaling p...

The generation of neurons from neural stem cells requires large-scale changes in gene expression that are controlled to a large extent by proneural transcription factors, such as Ascl1. While recent studies have characterized the differentiation genes activated by proneural factors, less is known on the mechanisms that suppress progenitor cell identity. Here, we show that Ascl1 induces the tran...

Generating neural stem cells and neurons from reprogrammed human astrocytes is a potential strategy for neurological repair. Here we show dedifferentiation of human cortical astrocytes into the neural stem/progenitor phenotype to obtain progenitor and mature cells with a neural fate. Ectopic expression of the reprogramming factors OCT4, SOX2, or NANOG into astrocytes in specific cytokine/cultur...

PURPOSE Intracerebral delivery of anti-epileptic compounds represents a novel strategy for the treatment of refractory epilepsy. Adenosine is a possible candidate for local delivery based on its proven anti-epileptic effects. Neural stem cells constitute an ideal cell source for intracerebral transplantation and long-term drug delivery. In order to develop a cell-based system for the long-term ...

stem/progenitor cell based therapeutic approach in our daily routine clinical practice, has been elusive dream in medical sciences and improvement of stem cell homing as one of major challenges in cell therapy programs, has been considered a promising milestone. it has been proved that stem/progenitor cells exhibit a homing response to injured tissues/organs, mediated by interactions of chemoki...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The subventricular zone in the adult brain is identified as an endogenous resource of neuronal precursors that can be recruited to adjacent lesioned areas. The hypothesis was tested that postischemic environmental enrichment might enhance subventricular zone cell genesis. METHODS A cortical infarct was induced in adult spontaneously hypertensive rats by ligating the mid...

background: uterine natural killer (unk) cells are the most abundant leukocytes in pre-implantation endometrium and early pregnancy deciduas in humans and rodents. they are associated with structural changes in maternal spiral arteries but regulation of their re-cruitment and activation is incompletely understood. the major subpopulation of unk cells in humans expresses cd56, the neural cell ad...

Neural stem and progenitor cells serve as a reservoir for new neurons in the adult brain throughout lifetime. One of the critical steps determining the net production of new neurons is neural progenitor proliferation, which needs to be tightly controlled. Since inflammation has detrimental effects on neurogenesis and the 5-lipoxygenase/leukotriene pathway is involved in inflammatory processes, ...

The mechanisms that control neural stem and progenitor cell survival are unknown. In several pathological conditions, death receptor (DR) ligands and inflammatory cytokines exert a deleterious effect on neurons, whereas primitive neural cells migrate and survive in the site of lesion. Here, we show that even in the presence of inflammatory cytokines, DRs are unable to generate death signals in ...