Vasoactive intestinal peptide but not galanin promotes survival of neonatal rat sympathetic neurons and neurite outgrowth of PC12 cells

VIP - a ’Very Important Peptide' in the sympathetic nervous system?

“…Consequently, VIP may act as a trophic factor for sympathetic neurons. This hypothesis is corroborated by the observation that VIP rescues a small population (10%) of postmitotic sympathetic neurons derived from neonatal superior cervical ganglia after withdrawal of nerve growth factor (Tanaka and Koike 1994;Klimaschewski et al 1995). Therefore, the ability of VIP to promote survival apparently decreases with age, whereas nerve growth factor primarily supports older neurons (Pincus et al 1994).…”

“…VIP also stimulates extension of neurites in rat pheochromocytoma (PC12) cells within minutes after addition of the peptide with a half-maximal concentration of 500 nM (Colbert et al 1994;Klimaschewski et al 1995). This effect is accompanied by the induction of proteins (e.g., VGF, MAP kinases) associated with neuronal differentiation (Okumura et al 1994a;Young et al 1994) and by tyrosine phosphorylation of several other proteins (Okumura et al 1994b).…”

Localization, regulation and functions of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators in cervical sympathetic ganglia

“…With regard to neuronal regeneration after le- sion, VIP has been found to induce axonal outgrowth, to stimulate mitosis and to enhance survival of sympathetic neuroblasts in vitro (Pincus et al, 1990). Moreover, VIP delays neuronal death for about 6 hours after NGF deprivation of explanted rat neonatal SCG neurons (Klimaschewski et al, 1995;Tanaka and Koike, 1994). However, influences of VIP on survival and growth of adult PGN remain to be determined.…”

Physiology, Signaling, and Pharmacology of Galanin Peptides and Receptors: Three Decades of Emerging Diversity

“…An early study reported that treatment with galanin failed to induce neurite outgrowth in PC12 cells (Klimaschewski et al, 1995), whereas a more recent study demonstrated that galanin significantly increased the percentage of PC12 cells Galanin Family Peptides and Receptors exhibiting neurite outgrowth (Hawes et al, 2006;Hobson et al, 2013).…”