EAN 2025 | The role of the P2Y12 receptor in microglial function and its potential link to MTLE

Yeah, the P2Y12 receptor is only expressed by microglial cells in human brain tissue, and we are interested in studying inflammatory response in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. We have seen previously that there is an overexpression of inflammatory markers, so we want to study the microglial function in these patients. And what we did in these experiments, we quantified the expression of this receptor in brain tissue of MTLE patients. And we also have an in vitro model of monocyte-derived microglial-like cells to quantify and to observe the expression of these receptors in an in vitro model to possibly apply this model to study further this immune response. To begin, we have a group of mesiotemporal lobe epilepsy patients that have been submitted to surgery and we obtain from these patients we obtain the hippocampus that is the local of the lesion and also the adjacent neocortical tissue that is removed as a routine procedure during these surgeries. And so we quantify the expression of this receptor of the P2Y12 to have some insights in microglial function in these two brain tissues. And we observed that there was an upregulation in both these regions of P2Y12 expression in patients comparing to healthy controls. So, at this point, we believe that this may suggest that cells are already in a, not homeostatic, but they are being activated in the first stage of activation, and they are prone to react more rapidly to insults. This will give us an insight into the neuroinflammatory response and microglial function, and we can understand better the function of these cells during the epileptogenic process and progression of epilepsy. And probably in the future, this could help us to understand more these inflammatory reactions and to have better treatments that target neuroinflammation in these patients.

This transcript is AI-generated. While we strive for accuracy, please verify this copy with the video.