• Jae Chul Lee, Jinsil Seong, Seung Hyun Kim, Se Jeong Lee, Yu Jin Cho, Jaeyeol An, Do-Hyun Nam, Kyeung Min Joo, and Choong Ik Cha.
• Department of Anatomy, Seoul National University College of Medicine, 28 Yongon-Dong, Chongno-Gu, Seoul 110-799, Republic of Korea.
• Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 2012 Feb 10; 418 (2): 359-65.

AbstractDisease progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is partially mediated by the toxic microenvironment established by microglia. In the present study, we used SOD1G93A transgenic mice as an in vivo ALS model and replaced microglia expressing mutant SOD1 (mSOD1) with microglia expressing wild-type SOD1 (w/tSOD1) to modulate the toxic microenvironment. Stereotactic injection of Clodronate liposome, a selective toxin against the monocyte/macrophage system, into the fourth ventricle of the brains of 12-week-old asymptomatic ALS mice reduced the number of microglia effectively in the central nervous system. Subsequent bone marrow transplantation (BMT) with bone marrow cells (BMCs) expressing w/tSOD1 and GFP leads to replacement of the endogenous microglia of the ALS mice with microglia expressing w/tSOD1 and GFP. The expression of mSOD1 in the other neural cells was not influenced by the replacement procedures, and immunological side effects were not observed. The replacement of microglia significantly slowed disease progression and prolonged survival of the ALS mice compared with the ALS mice treated by stereotactic injection of PBS-liposome and BMT with BMCs expressing mSOD1 or w/tSOD1. These results suggest that replacement of microglia would improve the neural cell microenvironment, thereby slowing disease progression. The mechanisms and functional implications of this replacement require further elucidation.Crown Copyright © 2012. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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