Part of the book: Aortic Stenosis
Part of the book: Symptoms of Parkinson's Disease
Neurodegenerative brain disorders (NBD) impair brain cells’ proteostasis with the accumulation of normal, mutant, misfolded or unfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). The increased ER burden of these proteins elicits the unfolded protein response (UPR) and stimulates autophagy (AUT). In the short term, UPR and AUT attenuate ER’s burden. With prolonged ER stress, the UPR changes from supporting cell survival to promoting apoptosis. The failure of the UPR, to meet the increased protein burden, leads to an increase in cytosolic protein accumulation that initially further stimulates AUT. Over time, the accumulated proteins in the cytosol undergo post-translational changes into toxic monomers and oligomers that repress AUT at multiple levels and promote cell death. This review describes the interlinked signalling pathways of AUT, apoptosis and necroptosis and their modulation by Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and prion diseases and outlines the pharmacological strategies for targeting AUT, apoptosis and necroptosis signalling pathways.
Part of the book: Programmed Cell Death