Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UNIPROT:P10636 (tau protein)
 5,110 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Staurosporine, a protein kinase inhibitor, induces neurite outgrowth in pheochromocytoma cells and, therefore, may serve as a potential prototype for neurotropic drugs. The principal aim of the present study was to characterize the cytoskeletal properties of neurites induced in pheochromocytoma cells by staurosporine, in comparison to those induced by nerve growth factor, with emphasis on tubulin and tau proteins. Two major findings are described: a) staurosporine rapidly induces outgrowth of neurites that are resistant to colchicine treatment; and b) staurosporine treatment causes a rapid increase in tau protein levels, with a time course similar to the initiation of its neurotropic effects. The following observations exclude tubulin as the cellular target for staurosporine action: a) the level, cellular distribution, and assembly properties of tubulin are not affected by staurosporine treatment; and b) colchicine uptake, its binding to tubulin, and its interference with tubulin polymerization are not changed by staurosporine. On the other hand, staurosporine treatment causes a transient, dose-dependent increase in tau protein levels. This increase, which is already evident after 1 hr, reaches a maximum of 2 to 3 fold after 5 hr of treatment and declines to basal level within the next 10 to 15 hr. The rapid, transient increase of tau protein levels induced by staurosporine is reminiscent of its neurotropic properties. Here we characterize and compare the cytoskeletal properties of neurites induced by treatment with staurosporine and with nerve growth factor, and we offer a mechanistic explanation for the rapid stabilization of staurosporine induced neurites.
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PMID:Neurites induced by staurosporine in PC12 cells are resistant to colchicine and express high levels of tau proteins. 830 77

K252 family of alkaloid toxins-kinase inhibitors are the most widely used compounds in biological research on the role of protein kinases in cellular transduction systems, biological functions and pathophysiology of neurological disorders. The wide research interest in these toxins is due to their potency in inhibiting cellular protein kinases. However, lack of kinase specificity is one of their major drawbacks. Synthesis of new K252 derivatives can be expected to open up a new generation of kinase inhibitors. Staurosporine might be considered as a prototype neurotropic drug in view of its ability to induce neurite outgrowth and to increase tau protein levels. Because it mimics some of the neuroprotective effects of NGF and might blocks certain signals required to enhance cellular levels and/or beta amyloid processing, staurosporine might play a beneficial role in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. The ability of staurosporine to promote neuronal regeneration and brain cholinergic neurons survival has been also demonstrated in animal studies (Nabeshima et al., 1991). The beneficial effects of K252a on the experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) disease mice model and it's ability to supress macrophage activation suggest an important role of protein kinases inhibitors as immunosupressive agents. These results may also point to the potential clinical relevance of K252 microbial toxins as prototypes for the development of new drugs for the management of neuronal diseases.
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PMID:K252a and staurosporine microbial alkaloid toxins as prototype of neurotropic drugs. 872 76

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is caused by the progressive degeneration of the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. Behavioral variant FTD (bvFTD) is the most common clinical subtype of FTD and pathological subtypes of bvFTD are known as FTD-tau, transactive response (TAR) DNA-binding protein 43 (TDP-43), and fused in sarcoma (FUS). Pathological mechanisms of bvFTD are largely unknown. In this study, we investigated the expression of pathological markers, such as p-Tau, TDP-43, and FUS, in the induced pluripotent stem-cell-derived neurons (iPSN) from two sporadic bvFTD patients and one normal subject. We also used an FTD-patient-derived iPSC-line-carrying microtubule-associated protein tau (MAPT) P301L point mutation as positive control for p-Tau expression. Staurosporine (STS) was used to induce cellular stress in order to investigate dynamic cellular responses related to the cell death pathway. As a result, the expression of active caspase-3 was highly increased in the bvFTD-iPSNs compared with control iPSNs in the STS-treated conditions. Other cell-death-related proteins, including Bcl-2-associated X protein (Bax)/Bcl-2 and cytochrome C, were also increased in the bvFTD-iPSNs. Moreover, we observed abnormal expression patterns of TDP-43 and FUS in the bvFTD-iPSNs compared with control iPSNs. We suggest that the iPSC technology might serve as a potential tool to demonstrate neurodegenerative phenotypes of bvFTD, which will be useful for studying pathological mechanisms for FTD as well as related drug screening in the future.
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PMID:Modeling of Frontotemporal Dementia Using iPSC Technology. 3272 73