Age-related toxicity of amyloid-beta associated with increased pERK and pCREB in primary hippocampal neurons: reversal by blueberry extract.

Further clarification is needed to address the paradox that memory formation, aging and neurodegeneration all involve calcium influx, oxyradical production (ROS) and activation of certain signaling pathways. In aged rats and in APP/PS-1 mice, cognitive and hippocampal Ca(2+) dysregulation was reversed by food supplementation with a high antioxidant blueberry extract. Here, we studied whether neurons were an important target of blueberry extract and whether the mechanism involved altered ROS signaling through MAP kinase and cyclic-AMP response element binding protein (CREB), pathways known to be activated in response to amyloid-beta (Aß). Primary hippocampal neurons were isolated and cultured from embryonic, middle-age or old-age (24 months) rats. Blueberry extract was found to be equally neuroprotective against Aß neurotoxicity at all ages. Increases in Aß toxicity with age were associated with age-related increases in immunoreactivity of neurons to pERK and an age-independent increase in pCREB. Treatment with blueberry extract strongly inhibited these increases in parallel with neuroprotection. Simultaneous labeling for ROS and for glutathione with dichlorofluorescein and monochlorobimane showed a mechanism of action of blueberry extract to involve transient ROS generation with an increase in the redox buffer glutathione. We conclude that the increased age-related susceptibility of old-age neurons to Aß toxicity may be due to higher levels of activation of pERK and pCREB pathways that can be protected by blueberry extract through inhibition of both these pathways through an ROS stress response. These results suggest that the beneficial effects of blueberry extract may involve transient stress signaling and ROS protection that may translate into improved cognition in aging rats and APP/PS1 mice given blueberry extract.

Isolation and culture of adult neurons and neurospheres.

Here we present a protocol for extraction and culture of neurons from adult rat or mouse CNS. The method proscribes an optimized protease digestion of slices, control of osmolarity and pH outside the incubator with Hibernate and density gradient separation of neurons from debris. This protocol produces yields of millions of cortical, hippocampal neurons or neurosphere progenitors from each brain. The entire process of neuron isolation and culture takes less than 4 h. With suitable growth factors, adult neuron regeneration of axons and dendrites in culture proceeds over 1-3 weeks to allow controlled studies in pharmacology, electrophysiology, development, regeneration and neurotoxicology. Adult neurospheres can be collected in 1 week as a source of neuroprogenitors ethically preferred over embryonic or fetal sources. This protocol emphasizes two differences between neuron differentiation and neurosphere proliferation: adhesion dependence and the differentiating power of retinyl acetate.

Age-related calcium changes, oxyradical damage, caspase activation and nuclear condensation in hippocampal neurons in response to glutamate and beta-amyloid.

Neuronal degeneration increases with age in response to stressors, but the sub-cellular mechanism is unknown, partly because of previous difficulty in studying aged neurons in isolation. We studied the mechanism of enhanced neuronal susceptibility to glutamate and beta-amyloid in terms of condensed nuclei and other upstream events in hippocampal neurons cultured from old rats (24 months) compared to middle-age (10 months) and embryonic rats. Treatment of neurons from old animals with beta-amyloid (or glutamate) produced condensed nuclei 1.5x (2x) more frequently than middle-age and 3x (4x) more frequently than embryonic neurons. In addition to age-related baseline levels of caspase activation, neurons from old animals showed a 50% greater increase in caspase activation compared to middle-age and embryonic neurons. In contrast to glutamate treatment, beta-amyloid caused oxyradical damage as protein carbonyls increased 2-fold higher for old neurons than middle-age and 10-fold higher than embryonic neurons. Contrary to expectations, steady-state calcium levels for adult neurons did not increase in response to beta-amyloid. Overall, these results suggest that aged neurons have an inherent increased susceptibility to beta-amyloid toxicity through an early action of oxyradicals followed by caspase activation and nuclear condensation, a common pathway of apoptosis. Age-related glutamate toxicity involves other steps that lead to nuclear condensation, but neuron responses to calcium influx appear more important to cell death than the amount of influx.