LIPIDOMICS OF NEURAL DEVELOPMENT AND DEMENTIA

Abstract

Human brain is comprised of various types of cells, including neural stem cells (NSCs), fate-committed progenitors and differentiated cells. Dysregulations in NSCs proliferation and differentiation, as well as in the growth of neurons and astrocytes may impair the normal development and result in dementia such as Alzheimer¿s disease (AD) and subcortical ischemic vascular dementia (SIVD). Identifying novel regulators of these biological processes is important for revealing the underlying mechanisms of neural development and the pathogenesis of dementia. Here we employed mass spectrometry-based lipidomic approaches to detect the comprehensive lipid profiles of NSCs, neurons at different developmental stages and astrocytes, which suggested several promising lipid candidates that regulate neural development. Furthermore, comparative lipidomic analysis based on brain tissues from SIVD and AD-SIVD mixed dementia patients implied that sphingolipid and phospholipid anomalies essentially underlie early pathogenic events of SIVD.