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Disease phenotypic screening in neuron-glia cocultures identifies blockers of inflammatory neurodegeneration.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Birkle, Timothy JY 
Willems, Henriette MG 
Skidmore, John 
Brown, Guy C 

Abstract

Neuropathology is often mediated by interactions between neurons and glia that cannot be modeled by monocultures. However, cocultures are difficult to use and analyze for high-content screening. Here, we perform compound screening using primary neuron-glia cultures to model inflammatory neurodegeneration, live-cell stains, and automated classification of neurons, astrocytes or microglia using open-source software. Out of 227 compounds with known bioactivities, 29 protected against lipopolysaccharide-induced neuronal loss, including drugs affecting adrenergic, steroid, inflammatory and MAP kinase signaling. The screen also identified physiological compounds, such as noradrenaline and progesterone, that protected and identified neurotoxic compounds, such as a TLR7 agonist, that induced microglial proliferation. Most compounds used here have not been tested in a neuron-glia coculture neurodegeneration assay previously. Thus, combining a complex cellular disease model with high-content screening of known compounds and automated image analysis allows identification of important biology, as well as potential targets and drugs for treatment.

Description

Keywords

Bioinformatics, Neuroscience

Journal Title

iScience

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2589-0042
2589-0042

Volume Title

Publisher

Elsevier BV
Sponsorship
Medical Research Council (MR/L010593/1)
Medical Research Council UK funding to GB (MR/L010593), and by core funding to the ALBORADA Drug Discovery Institute (ARUK-2023DDI-CAM) with support from the ALBORADA Trust.