Recently, Prof. LIU Gongping’s team, of the School of Basic Medical Sciences, TJMC of HUST, published an online report entitled Recombinant human erythropoietin ameliorates cognitive dysfunction of APP/PS1 mice by attenuating neuron apoptosis via HSP90β in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy (if = 18.187)

Recently, lower hemoglobin/anemia in the elderly is found to be associated with cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), implying that erythropoietin (EPO) may be of benefit for AD. As a clinically safe-to-use drug, besides its hematopoietic function, recombinant human EPO (rhEPO) is reported to present multifaceted neuroprotective effects. Unfortunately, few clinical studies investigated the effect of rhEPO in AD patients. The dose, the therapeutic window, and duration of treatment may be critical influencing factors for clinical applications of EPO.

They found that rhEPO treatment attenuated JNK/P38 pathway associated apoptosis via upregulation of HSP90β, reduced Aβ load, and reversed dendritic spine loss, together contributing to ameliorating the cognitive impairment of APP/PS1 mice . Preventive treatment also promoted angiogenesis and inhibited neuroinflammation. The study revealed that early prevention with high dose rhEPO treatment brought better cognitive improvement, which provides new clues for rhEPO in clinical trials for AD.

This work was completed by Prof. LIU Gongping’s team , with WAN Huali (doctoral student), ZHANG Bingge (master student) and CHEN Chongyang (doctoral student) as co-first authors, Prof. LIU Gongping as corresponding author, and Huazhong University of Science and Technology as the first completion unit. The project is funded by the general project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Key Research and Development Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology for Chronic Diseases.