Kyung-ho Seok and Jong-heon Kim, a research team at Kyungpook National University School of Medicine, investigated the inflammation-relieving function of the bioprotein C8-gamma, which increases in concentration in brain inflammation, one of the pathological symptoms of dementia.
C8-gamma is a constituent protein of the C8-complex, one of the components that play an auxiliary role in the inflammatory response.
Brain inflammation, a major pathology of dementia, is a cellular response to respond to infections in the brain or to remove foreign substances.
It is mainly caused by the activity of glial cells such as astrocytes and microglia.
The glial cells are mainly composed of astrocytes that support neuronal survival and activity, and microglia that are responsible for cleaning the brain.
Minor encephalopathy is recovered, but excessive encephalopathy causes irreversible brain damage, which can cause dementia.
The research team observed that the C8-gamma protein concentration in the brain of dementia patients or dementia patients with brain inflammation was higher than that of the normal group.
The concentration of this protein was also increased in the cerebrospinal fluid and blood than in the normal group.
Accordingly, using an animal model of brain inflammation and Alzheimer’s disease, it was found that acute encephalopathy stimulates astrocytes and induces C8-gamma expression.
This was verified in the brain tissue of an actual Alzheimer patient.
The mechanism of C8-gamma competitively inhibiting the interaction between S1P and S1PR2 and inhibiting excessive microglia activity was revealed.
S1P is a protein known to induce various cellular activities such as promoting inflammatory activity and cell migration, and the binding of SIPR2 and S1P promotes the inflammatory activity of microglia.
Increasing the concentration of C8-gamma protein in dementia patients is expected to be a clue for diagnosis, and the role of C8-gamma in relieving inflammation through inhibition of microglia activity is expected to be a clue for the development of therapeutic agents.
Professor Seok Kyung-ho said, “C8-gamma is secreted in the form of C8-complexes from other tissues, but standalone C8-gamma is specifically expressed only in the brain.” “Developing a safer treatment method in terms of higher diagnostic availability and use of bioproteins. It will be the clues of “.
Meanwhile, this research was conducted with support from the Ministry of Science and Technology Ministry of Communications and the Korea Research Foundation’s Brain Science Institute’s Cloth Technology Development Project and Basic Research Project (MRC).
It was conducted jointly with the Korea Institute of Science and Technology and the Korea Brain Research Institute, and was published as an online cover paper on the 31st of last month in Brain, an international academic journal in the field of brain science.
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