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Research Paper|Volume 11, Issue 2|pp 401—422

3,4,5-Tricaffeoylquinic acid induces adult neurogenesis and improves deficit of learning and memory in aging model senescence-accelerated prone 8 mice

Kazunori Sasaki1,2,3, Julie Davies4, Noelia Geribaldi Doldán1,4, Sayo Arao5, Farhana Ferdousi1, Francis G. Szele4, Hiroko Isoda1,2,5
  • 1Alliance for Research on the Mediterranean and North Africa (ARENA), University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba City, Ibaraki 305-8572, Japan
  • 2Interdisciplinary Research Center for Catalytic Chemistry, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba City, Ibaraki 305-8565, Japan
  • 3Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba City, Ibaraki 305-8571, Japan
  • 4Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX13QX, UK
  • 5Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba City, Ibaraki 305-8572, Japan

* * Equal contribution

Received: September 14, 2018Accepted: December 26, 2018Published: January 17, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.101748

Copyright: © 2019 Sasaki et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Caffeoylquinic acid (CQA) is a natural polyphenol with evidence of antioxidant and neuroprotective effects and prevention of deficits in spatial learning and memory. We studied the cognitive-enhancing effect of 3,4,5-tricaffeoylquinic acid (TCQA) and explored its cellular and molecular mechanism in the senescence-accelerated mouse prone 8 (SAMP8) model of aging and Alzheimer’s disease as well as in human neural stem cells (hNSCs). Mice were fed with 5 mg/kg of TCQA for 30 days and were tested in the Morris water maze (MWM). Brain tissues were collected for immunohistochemical detection of bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) to detect activated stem cells and newborn neurons. TCQA-treated SAMP8 exhibited significantly improved cognitive performance in MWM compared to water-treated SAMP8. TCQA-treated SAMP8 mice also had significantly higher numbers of BrdU+/glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP+) and BrdU+/Neuronal nuclei (NeuN+) cells in the dentate gyrus (DG) neurogenic niche compared with untreated SAMP8. In hNSCs, TCQA induced cell cycle arrest at G0/G1, actin cytoskeleton organization, chromatin remodeling, neuronal differentiation, and bone morphogenetic protein signaling. The neurogenesis promoting effect of TCQA in the DG of SAMP8 mice might explain the cognition-enhancing influence of TCQA observed in our study, and our hNSCs in aggregate suggest a therapeutic potential for TCQA in aging-associated diseases.