Reduced Expression of Immune Response Genes in Neural Cells with Mutations in the PARK2 Gene in Parkinson's Disease.

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Parkinson's disease (PD) is one of the most common chronic neurodegenerative diseases. PD is characterized by the dysfunction of multiple body functions caused by changes in the expression of a large number of genes. Current evidence suggests that changes in the innate immunity and neuroinflammation may play an important role in the pathogenesis of the disease. However, the exact mechanism through which immune dysfunction develops in the context of PD pathogenesis remains unclear. In this study, with the use of transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq), followed by quantitative PCR, we managed to detect a differential expression of the genes involved in the immune activity in neural progenitors (NPs) and glial cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells from healthy donors (HDs) and PD patients carrying mutations in the PARK2 gene. Expression of many of the genes involved in a number of innate immune signaling pathways (in particular, in the canonical NFκB, non-canonical NFκB, the TNFα/NFκB, IL6/STAT3, IL2/STAT5 pathways, as well as the IFNγ and IFNα response) in cells from PD patients was found to be reduced compared to that in the cells from healthy donors. A mechanism for regulating these signaling pathways in the neural precursors of PD patients carrying mutations in the PARK2 gene is proposed.

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