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α-Arbutin Protects Against Parkinson’s Disease-Associated Mitochondrial Dysfunction In Vitro and In Vivo

NeuroMolecular Medicine volume 22, pages 56–67 (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD), the most common neurodegenerative movement disorder, is characterized by the progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons in substantia nigra. The underlying mechanisms of PD pathogenesis have not been fully illustrated and currently PD remains incurable. Accumulating evidences suggest that mitochondrial dysfunction plays pivotal role in the dopaminergic neuronal death. Therefore, discovery of novel and safe agent for rescuing mitochondrial dysfunction would benefit PD treatment. Here we demonstrated for the first time that α-Arbutin (Arb), a natural polyphenol extracted from Ericaceae species, displayed significant protective effect on the rotenone (Rot)-induced mitochondrial dysfunction and apoptosis of human neuroblastoma cell (SH-SY5Y). We further found that the neuroprotective effect of Arb was associated with ameliorating oxidative stress, stabilizing of mitochondrial membrane potential, and enhancing adenosine triphosphate production. To investigate the underlying mechanism, we checked the AMP-activated protein kinase and autophagy pathway and we found that both were involved in the neuroprotection of Arb. Moreover, we explored the protective effect of Arb in drosophila PD model and found that Arb rescued parkin deficiency-induced motor function disability and mitochondrial abnormality of drosophila. Taken together, our study demonstrated that Arb got excellent neuroprotective effect on PD models both in vitro and in vivo and Arb might serve as a potent therapeutic agent for the treatment of PD.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported from the National Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 81672508, 81773802), and Jiangsu Provincial Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars (BK20170041), Key University Science Research Project of Jiangsu Province (No. 16KJA180004), Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province (2019JM-016), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and China-Sweden Joint Mobility Project (51811530018).

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Author notes

  1. Yaqi Ding and Deqin Kong have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics (KLOFE) & Institute of Advanced Materials (IAM), Nanjing Tech University (NanjingTech), 30 South Puzhu Road, Nanjing, 211816, People’s Republic of China

    Yaqi Ding, Tong Zhou, Nai-di Yang, Chenqi Xin, Jiajia Xu, Qi Wang, Hang Zhang, Qiong Wu, Xiaomei Lu, Chengwu Zhang, Lin Li & Wei Huang

  2. Department of Toxicology, The Ministry of Education Key Lab of Hazard Assessment and Control in Special Operational Environment, Shaanxi Provincial Key Lab of Free Radical Biology and Medicine, School of Public Health, The Medical University of Air Force, Xi’an, 710032, People’s Republic of China

    Deqin Kong

  3. Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, 21 Lower Kent Ridge Road, Singapore, 119077, Singapore

    Kahleong Lim

  4. School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, 210009, People’s Republic of China

    Bo Ma

  5. Shaanxi Institute of Flexible Electronics (SIFE), Northwestern Polytechnical University, 127 West Youyi Road, Xi’an, 710072, People’s Republic of China

    Wei Huang

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  1. Yaqi Ding
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Correspondence to Chengwu Zhang or Lin Li.

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Ding, Y., Kong, D., Zhou, T. et al. α-Arbutin Protects Against Parkinson’s Disease-Associated Mitochondrial Dysfunction In Vitro and In Vivo. Neuromol Med 22, 56–67 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12017-019-08562-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12017-019-08562-6

Keywords

  • α-Arbutin
  • Parkinson’s disease
  • Mitochondria
  • Oxidative stress
  • Autophagy