A model of chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment.

Chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment (CRCI) is a common adverse effect of treatment and is characterized by deficits involving multiple cognitive domains including memory. Despite the significant morbidity of CRCI and the expected increase in cancer survivors over the coming decades, the pathophysiology of CRCI remains incompletely understood, highlighting the need for new model systems to study CRCI. Given the powerful array of genetic approaches and facile high throughput screening ability in , our goal was to validate a model of CRCI. We administered the chemotherapeutic agents cisplatin, cyclophosphamide, and doxorubicin to adult . Neurocognitive deficits were observed with all tested chemotherapies, especially cisplatin. We then performed histologic and immunohistochemical analysis of cisplatin-treated tissue, demonstrating neuropathologic evidence of increased neurodegeneration, DNA damage, and oxidative stress. Thus, our model of CRCI recapitulates clinical, radiologic, and histologic alterations reported in chemotherapy patients. Our new model can be used for mechanistic dissection of pathways contributing to CRCI and pharmacologic screens to identify novel therapies to ameliorate CRCI.