#microglia

Extracted wisdom teeth and baby teeth—this paper takes on spinal cord injury with exosomes from stem cells harvested from teeth that would normally be thrown away. The authors compared 3 kinds of stem cells on the same footing and chose dental pulp, narrowed 727 proteins down to a candidate called PSMD1, a “part of the proteasome,” and report that it tipped microglia toward the M2 side. But the treatment was tried only in cultured cells and mice. Dr. Exotaro reads through this preclinical study.

In Parkinson's disease, the brain's immune cells—microglia—switch into a 'combat mode that guzzles sugar,' damaging neurons through inflammation. A research team in Haikou, China, showed that lncA2M-AS1, a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) carried by exosomes from olfactory mucosa-derived mesenchymal stem cells (OM-MSC), calms microglial metabolism and suppresses neuroinflammation through two switches, CFL1 and ROCK1. Exotaro walks through this preclinical study in mice and cultured cells.