The findings were published in Brain and Behaviour. Our findings suggest that the mechanisms we observed might spur brain tumour development at a postnatal stage.” “These progenitor cells, which continue to be generated throughout the human lifespan, are known to be the cell of origin for brain tumours like diffuse midline glioma. “We saw that too much PDGFRA interfered with differentiation of progenitor cells that give rise to cells that make myelin,” continued Becher. Of course, more research is needed to confirm our results and explore further.”īecher also pointed out that the current study focused on prenatal events, which might explain why no tumours were formed, since timing is very important in cancer development. “Blocking this receptor might prove to be a novel strategy to treat myelination disorders like MS. “Our study provides a new model for studying hypomyelination,” stated Oren Becher, senior author on the study.
Rather, the mice exhibited stunted growth, ataxia and a severe loss of myelination in the brain and spinal cord.ĭiscover how scientists created a cellular blueprint of multiple sclerosis lesions: They found that over-expression of PDGFRA did not cause tumours, as anticipated. The researchers developed a conditional knock-in (KI) mouse model that over-expresses wild type (WT) human PDGFRA (hPDGFRA) in prenatal Olig2-expressing progenitors. The cellular and molecular changes that occur in OPCs in response to unregulated PDGFRA expression, however, are not known. PDGFRA is often genetically amplified or mutated in many types of gliomas, including diffuse midline glioma (DMG). Platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) signalling, through the ligand PDGF-A and its receptor PDGFRA, is important for the growth and maintenance of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs) in the central nervous system (CNS), the team explain in their paper. A team at the Ann & Robert H Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, US, have made a discovery that could lead to a new model for researching diseases of hypomyelination such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and potentially aid in the identification of drug targets.
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