[베리타스알파=신승희 기자] The research team of Professor Seong-bae Lee of the DGIST Brain and Cognitive Science major announced on the 6th that it has newly identified a key regulatory mechanism that controls the movement of TDP-43 protein into neurons, which contributes to the development of various degenerative brain diseases such as Lou Gehrig’s disease and frontotemporal dementia.
This research, conducted in collaboration with the research team of Professor Hwang Dae-hee of the Department of Life Sciences at Seoul National University, is expected to open the possibility for the development of effective treatments in the early stages of Lou Gehrig’s disease and frontotemporal dementia.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, called’Lou Gehrig’s disease’, still has not been able to identify the exact pathologic mechanism and develop a treatment. Along with the specific damage to motor neurons, known as a representative pathological characteristic of Lou Gehrig’s disease is a phenomenon in which TDP-43 protein, which is mainly present in the nucleus of motor neurons, moves to the cytoplasm abnormally and accumulates depending on the situation. It is also found in patients with various degenerative brain diseases such as frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer’s dementia, Huntington’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease.
Accordingly, the joint research team of Professor Seongbae Lee of DGIST Brain and Cognitive Science major and Professor Daehee Hwang of the Department of Life Sciences at Seoul National University conducted a study on a physiological program that regulates the movement of TDP-43 protein between the nucleus and cytoplasm in nerve cells. As a result, it was found that the intracellular calcium-calpain-impotin-linked signaling system was involved, and when the cellular environment changed under normal circumstances, the intracellular location of the TDP-43 protein changed between the cytoplasm and the nucleus.
In particular, through this study, it was confirmed that the motility of the ALS animal model can be significantly restored by properly controlling the intracellular’calcium-calpain-impotin signaling system’ according to the disease progression. Therefore, the joint research team suggested that TDP-43 protein can be prevented from degenerative brain disease by preemptively controlling the movement of TDP-43 protein in the early stages of the disease before it is abnormally aggregated and toxic in the cytoplasm of nerve cells. A new treatment strategy was proposed.
Professor Seong-Bae Lee of DGIST’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Science said, “This study has identified a cell’s intrinsic program that controls the intracellular migration of TDP-43, a representative degenerative brain disease-causing protein.” It is expected that it will be possible to develop therapeutic agents based on new strategies for various degenerative brain diseases that are involved.”
This research was conducted in collaboration with the research team of Professor Hwang Dae-hee of Seoul National University, and DGIST’s Brain and Cognitive Science major Jeong-hyang Park and Dr. Chang-geun Jeong participated as co-first authors. The research results were published on Friday, December 11 in the online edition of’eLife’, an academic journal in the field of life science, and are the results of the Basic Research Laboratory (BRL) support project carried out with the support of the National Research Foundation of Korea with the funding of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Communication.
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