Disturbed lipophagy skews foamy macrophages to a disease-promotiong phenotype in progressive MS. (R-10648)

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease of the central nervous system in which the protective layer surrounding nerves, called myelin, is broken-down by immune cells. While immune cells containing myelin are abundant in MS lesions, their impact on lesion progression remains unclear. Driving these cells to become anti-inflammatory and more reparative is considered a promising strategy to halt MS disease progression. Our data indicate that when excess lipids originating from myelin accumulate in immune cells they become more disease-promoting. Moreover, a failure of lipophagy, a mechanism that helps to get rid of excess cellular lipids, is involved in the induction of this phenotype. We unravel in this project the mechanisms of lipophagy in immune cells that take up myelin, and determine whether targeting lipophagy represents an effective therapeutic intervention for MS.

Keywords:Lipophagy, multiple sclerosis

Disciplines:Lipids, Neurological and neuromuscular diseases