TITLE:
Advances in Oligoprotection
AUTHORS:
Hong Liao, Dixit Sanjaya Mani
KEYWORDS:
Oligodendrocytes, neurovascular unit, oxidative stress, excitotoxicity; demyelinating diseases, stroke, spinal cord injury, neuropharmacology
JOURNAL NAME:
Neuroscience and Medicine,
Vol.2 No.2,
June
29,
2011
ABSTRACT: Oligodendrocytes, the myelinating glial cells of the nervous system, in various disease states display great vulnerability to excitotoxic damage, oxidative stress, and inflammatory cytokines. Besides demyelinating diseases where oligoden-drocyte injury is primarily implicated, damage to them also occurs secondarily in various neuropathies. Oligoprotec-tion should, therefore, be looked into something not just as a means for protecting oligodendrocytes alone but also as a common target of protecting neurons and the neurogliovascular unit as a whole. In this review, we provide a descrip-tion on oligodendrocytes, the reasons for their vulnerability, the evolving new concepts of protecting neurovascular unit and recently neurogliovascular unit; the various diseases where oligodendrocyte injury is implicated with a brief idea on different injury mechanisms of oligodendrocytes. Finally, we present the summary of the drugs that have shown promising results in protecting oligodendrocytes or in protecting white matter as a whole in different in-vivo and in-vitro models.