Advances in Stem Cells Biology: New Approaches to Understand Depression

Abstract

Depression is a highly prevalent complex neuropsychiatric disorder, which ranks first among all mental and neurological disorders as a contributor to the global burden of disease. However, available treatments are still far from ideal, for their specificity as well as their efficacy. This situation can now be improved by the increasing availability of stem cells, which allows the development of in vitro human neural systems to model the brain. These models complement observations from animal models and patients with depression, allowing for a better understanding of the complexity of this psychiatric illness and potential treatments. Cells derived from the olfactory neuroepithelium, multipotent fetal hippocampal progenitor cells (HPCs) and human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have shown promising leads. Using HPCs and iPSC-derived forebrain neurons, we managed to provide further insights into the action of drugs with antidepressant action as well as on molecular mechanisms underlying the effect of stress and inflammation, both linked to the pathophysiology of depression. Particular attention has been paid to the complex pathways by which the immune and stress systems differently determine the final developmental fate of HPCs and the synaptic plasticity of iPSCs. The combination of accessibility and validity of the available stem cells models will allow further work to increase our insights into the biology of depression and support the identification of novel therapeutic targets.

Liraglutide attenuates the depressive- and anxiety-like behaviour in the corticosterone induced depression model via improving hippocampal neural plasticity

“…LTP of synaptic activity in the hippocampus and adult neurogenesis have been implied to play a key role in memory formation and hippocampal-dependent behaviors (Hawkins et al, 1998;Stuchlik, 2014). Impaired hippocampal functions, especially decreased neural plasticity and LTP, contributes to the development of depression (Borsini and Zunszain, 2016;Dina et al, 2017). In current study, we found that liraglutide treatment normalized LTP in the hippocampus after CORT treatment, and promoted adult neurogenesis in hippocampus that had been impaired by CORT ( Fig 3~4).…”

Plausible Role of Stem Cell Types for Treating and Understanding the Pathophysiology of Depression

“…The germ layers mature into a specific organ. Tissue stem cells can be present in bone marrow, bone, liver, brain, etc., since certain progenitor cells that contributed to organogenesis do not differentiate terminally [ 61 ]. Since they inevitably lead to differentiated cells and specialized cells of the tissue or organ, tissue stem cells are also known as progenitor cells.…”

Inhibitor of DNA-Binding/Differentiation Proteins and Environmental Toxicants: Genomic Impact on the Onset of Depressive Dysfunction

“…We established that these 14 genes are represented in 33 molecular pathways [56]. The top 3 pathways are represented in Table 2 and it is revealed that each of these pathways have a role in depression and related ailments [57,58,59,60,61]. To validate that these 14 genes do interact and create a network, the STRING database was used to help provide protein-to-protein interaction [62,63].…”