Visceral Fat Dysfunctions in the Rat Social Isolation Model of Psychosis.

Medication with neuroleptics has been associated with adipose tissue dysfunctions and, in particular, with increased visceral fat amount. However, several studies suggested that antipsychotic treatment might not be the main responsible of fat mass accumulation, as this has been also described in not treated psychotic patients. One of the most used "drug-free" rodent models of psychosis is the social isolation rearing of young adult rats, which provides a non-pharmacologic method of inducing long-term alterations reminiscent of symptoms seen in psychotic patients.

Decreased neural precursor cell pool in NADPH oxidase 2-deficiency: From mouse brain to neural differentiation of patient derived iPSC.

There is emerging evidence for the involvement of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the regulation of stem cells and cellular differentiation. Absence of the ROS-generating NADPH oxidase NOX2 in chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) patients, predominantly manifests as immune deficiency, but has also been associated with decreased cognition. Here, we investigate the role of NOX enzymes in neuronal homeostasis in adult mouse brain and in neural cells derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC).

Fingerprinting of neurotoxic compounds using a mouse embryonic stem cell dual luminescence reporter assay.

Identification of neurotoxic drugs and environmental chemicals is an important challenge. However, only few tools to address this topic are available. The aim of this study was to develop a neurotoxicity/developmental neurotoxicity (DNT) test system, using the pluripotent mouse embryonic stem cell line CGR8 (ESCs).

Soluble beta amyloid evokes alteration in brain norepinephrine levels: role of nitric oxide and interleukin-1.

Strong evidence showed neurotoxic properties of beta amyloid (Aβ) and its pivotal role in the Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenesis. Beside, experimental data suggest that Aβ may have physiological roles considering that such soluble peptide is produced and secreted during normal cellular activity. There is now suggestive evidence that neurodegenerative conditions, like AD, involve nitric oxide (NO) in their pathogenesis.

Human three-dimensional engineered neural tissue reveals cellular and molecular events following cytomegalovirus infection.

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is the most common cause of congenital infection of the central nervous system (CNS). To overcome the limited access to human neural tissue and stringent species specificity of HCMV, we used engineered neural tissues to: (i) provide a technical advance to mimick features of HCMV infection in a human neural fetal tissue in vitro and (ii) characterize the molecular and cellular phenomenon following HCMV infection in this tissue. Herein, we infected hESC-derived engineered neural tissues (ENTs) whose organization resembles fetal brain.