Intermittent hypoxia (IH) during sleep is a hallmark of sleep apnea, causing significant neuronal apoptosis, and cognitive and behavioral deficits in CNS regions underlying memory processing and executive functions. IH-induced neuroinflammation is thought to contribute to cognitive deficits after IH. In the present studies, we tested the hypothesis that IH would differentially induce inflammatory factor gene expression in microglia in a CNS region-dependent manner, and that the effects of IH would differ temporally. To test this hypothesis, adult rats were exposed to intermittent hypoxia (2 min intervals of 10.5% O2) for 8 hours/day during their respective sleep cycles for 1, 3 or 14 days. Cortex, medulla and spinal cord tissues were dissected, microglia were immunomagnetically isolated and mRNA levels of the inflammatory genes iNOS, COX-2, TNFα, IL-1β and IL-6 and the innate immune receptor TLR4 were compared to levels in normoxia. Inflammatory gene expression was also assessed in tissue homogenates (containing all CNS cells). We found that microglia from different CNS regions responded to IH differently. Cortical microglia had longer lasting inflammatory gene expression whereas spinal microglial gene expression was rapid and transient. We also observed that inflammatory gene expression in microglia frequently differed from that in tissue homogenates from the same region, indicating that cells other than microglia also contribute to IH-induced neuroinflammation. Lastly, microglial TLR4 mRNA levels were strongly upregulated by IH in a region- and time-dependent manner, and the increase in TLR4 expression appeared to coincide with timing of peak inflammatory gene expression, suggesting that TLR4 may play a role in IH-induced neuroinflammation. Together, these data indicate that microglial-specific neuroinflammation may play distinct roles in the effects of intermittent hypoxia in different CNS regions.

Inflammation arises in the CNS from a number of neurodegenerative and oncogenic disorders, as well as from ischemic and traumatic brain injuries. These pathologies give rise to increased levels of extracellular adenine nucleotides which, via activation of a variety of cell surface P2 purinergic receptors, influence the inflammatory activities of responding immune cells. One P2 receptor subtype in particular, the P2X 7 receptor, potentiates the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as interleukin-1β (IL-1β) from macrophage-like cells. It is also thought to contribute to secondary brain injury by inducing neuronal cell death. Therefore, antagonism of this receptor could have significant therapeutic impact on all disorders, not just CNS, to which excessive inflammatory activities contribute. The use of currently available P2X 7 receptor antagonists for the treatment of CNS inflammation has been limited to the generally non-selective antagonists PPADS, oxidized ATP, Brilliant Blue G, suramin, calmidizolium, and KN-62. However, the recent patents and development of novel P2X 7 receptor antagonists, as discussed in this review, will provide new tools both for clinical and research purposes. Here we discuss compounds for which patents have been applied since 2006, from the following categories: benzamide inhibitors, bicycloheteroaryl compounds, acylhdranzine antagonists, biaromatic P2X 7 antagonists, heterocyclic compounds and amide derivatives, and aromatic amine antagonists.

Microglial hyperactivity contributes to neuronal damage resulting from CNS injury and disease. Therefore, a better understanding of endogenous microglial receptor systems that can be exploited to modulate their inflammatory functions is important if better, neuroprotective therapeutics are to be designed. Previous studies from our lab and others have demonstrated that the P2X7 purinergic receptor agonist BzATP attenuates microglial inflammatory mediator production stimulated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS), suggesting that purinergic receptors may be one such receptor system that can be used for manipulating microglial activation. However, although P2X7 receptor activation is well recognized to regulate processing and release of cytokines, little is known concerning its role in regulating the transcription of inflammatory genes, nor the molecular mechanisms underlying these transcriptional effects. In the present studies, we identify that the transcription factors early growth response (Egr)-1, -2 and -3 are downstream signaling targets of P2X7 receptors in microglia, and that their activation is sensitive to MEK and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) inhibitors. Moreover, using RNAi, we demonstrate that Egr factors and P2X7 receptors are necessary for BzATP-mediated attenuation of iNOS, and stimulation of TNF-α and IL-6 gene expression. BzATP also attenuates neuronal death induced by LPS conditioned medium, and P2X7 receptors are required for this effect. These studies are the first to identify Egr factors as regulators of inflammatory gene expression following P2X7 receptor activation, and suggest that P2X7 receptors may utilize the MAPK-Egr pathway to exert differential effects on microglial inflammatory activities which are beneficial to neuron survival.

To guide behavior, sensory systems detect the onset and offset of stimuli and process these distinct inputs via parallel pathways. In the retina, this strategy is implemented by splitting neural signals for light onset and offset via synapses connecting photoreceptors to ON and OFF bipolar cells, respectively. It remains poorly understood which molecular cues establish the architecture of this synaptic configuration to split light-onset and light-offset signals. A mutant with reduced synapses between photoreceptors and one bipolar cell type, but not the other, could reveal a critical cue. From this approach, we report a novel synaptic role for () in promoting the structure and function of cone synapses that transmit light-offset information. Electrophysiological and behavioral analyses indicated mutant zebrafish have dysfunctional cone-to-OFF bipolar cell synapses and impaired responses to light offset, but intact cone-to-ON bipolar cell synapses and light-onset responses. Ultrastructural analyses of mutant cones showed a lack of presynaptic domains at synapses with OFF bipolar cells. is expressed postsynaptically to the cones during retinal synaptogenesis and encodes a secreted metalloprotease known to stimulate insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) signaling. Induction of dominant-negative IGF1 receptor expression during synaptogenesis reduced light-offset responses. Conversely, stimulating IGF1 signaling at this time improved mutants' light-offset responses and cone presynaptic structures. Together, our results indicate Pappaa-regulated IGF1 signaling as a novel pathway that establishes how cone synapses convey light-offset signals to guide behavior. Distinct sensory inputs, like stimulus onset and offset, are often split at distinct synapses into parallel circuits for processing. In the retina, photoreceptors and ON and OFF bipolar cells form discrete synapses to split neural signals coding light onset and offset, respectively. The molecular cues that establish this synaptic configuration to specifically convey light onset or offset remain unclear. Our work reveals a novel cue: (), which regulates photoreceptor synaptic structure and function to specifically transmit light-offset information. Pappaa is a metalloprotease that stimulates local insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) signaling. IGF1 promotes various aspects of synaptic development and function and is broadly expressed, thus requiring local regulators, like Pappaa, to govern its specificity.

Hypoxia and increased extracellular nucleotides are frequently coincident in the brainstem. Extracellular nucleotides are potent modulators of microglial inflammatory gene expression via P2X purinergic receptor activation. Although hypoxia is also known to modulate inflammatory gene expression, little is known about how hypoxia or P2X receptor activation alone affect inflammatory molecule production in brainstem microglia, nor how hypoxia and P2X receptor signaling interact when they occur together. In this study, we investigated the ability of a brief episode of hypoxia (2hrs) in the presence and absence of the non-selective P2X receptor agonist 2′(3′)-O-(4-benzoylbenzoyl)adenosine-5′-triphosphate (BzATP) to promote inflammatory gene expression in brainstem microglia in adult rats. We evaluated inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) mRNA levels in immunomagnetically-isolated brainstem microglia. Whereas iNOS and IL-6 gene expression increased with hypoxia and BzATP alone, TNFα expression was unaffected. Surprisingly, BzATP-induced inflammatory effects are lost after hypoxia, suggesting that hypoxia impairs pro-inflammatory P2X receptor signaling. We also evaluated the expression of key P2X receptors activated by BzATP, namely P2X1, P2X4 and P2X7 receptors. Whereas hypoxia did not alter their expression, BzATP upregulated P2X4 and P2X7 mRNAs; these effects were ablated in hypoxia. Although both P2X4 and P2X7 receptor expression correlated with increased microglial iNOS and IL-6 levels in microglia from normoxic rats, in hypoxia, P2X7 only correlated with IL-6, and P2X4 correlated only with iNOS. In addition, correlations between P2X7 and P2X4 were lost following hypoxia, suggesting that P2X4 and P2X7 receptor signaling differs in normoxia and hypoxia. Together, these data suggest that hypoxia suppresses P2X receptor-induced inflammatory gene expression, indicating a potentially immunosuppressive role of extracellular nucleotides in brainstem microglia following exposure to hypoxia.