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Research Paper|Volume 11, Issue 24|pp 12278—12294

Insulin-like growth factor-1 enhances neuroprotective effects of neural stem cell exosomes after spinal cord injury via an miR-219a-2-3p/YY1 mechanism

Ke Ma1, Huiyou Xu1, Jian Zhang1, Fei Zhao1, Haiqian Liang1, Hongtao Sun1, Ping Li1, Sai Zhang1, Renjie Wang1, Xuyi Chen1
  • 1Department of Neurosurgery, Characteristic Medical Center of Chinese People’s Armed Police Force, Institution of Brain Trauma and Neurology Disease of People's Armed Police Forces, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Neurotrauma Repair, Tianjin 300162, China
* Equal contribution
Received: September 7, 2019Accepted: November 23, 2019Published: December 17, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102568

Copyright © 2019 Ma 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

Spinal cord injury (SCI) remains the most common cause of paralysis, and there are no effective therapies for SCI patients. Neural stem cell (NSC)-derived exosomes can attenuate apoptosis and neuroinflammation after traumatic spinal cord injury, but the mechanisms underlying these effects remain unclear. Here, we examined the efficacy of miRNAs isolated from exosomes as treatments for SCI and characterized their mechanisms of action. Furthermore, we evaluated the effects of exosomes formed in the presence of insulin growth factor-1 (IFG-1, IGF-Exo), which promotes neural proliferation and regeneration, as well as normal exosomes (Nor-Exo) and compared control and H2O2-treated groups both in vitro and in vivo. Using microRNA sequencing and qRT-PCR, we identified miR-219a-2-3p, levels of which were higher in the IGF-Exo than Nor-Exo group and played crucial anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptosis roles. Additional experiments revealed that IGF-Exo inhibits YY1 expression through up-regulation of miR-219a-2-3p. This in turn inhibits the NF-κB pathway, partly inhibiting neuroinflammation and promoting the neuroprotective effects after SCI.