Neuroprotective Mechanism Of Neuroglobin (ngb) Expression And Regulation And Its Application In Research

Oxygen is the essential element for life. How the nervous system uses oxygen is an important scientific proposition for health of the body. The discovery of third oxygen-binding globin, neuroglobin, reported by Burmester et al, has brought new lights to this field. We wish to understand the relation of NGB and oxygen utilizing of nervous system from following three aspects.At first, we demonstrated with various biochemical evidences that neuroglobin could interact with the beta-2 subunit of Na~+, K~+-ATPase (NKA1b2). Based on which, a hypothesis that "energy conservation" might be a novel neuroprotective strategy was proposed. This hypothesis provided a new viewpoint on neuroprotective research and provided a novel way for discovering new drugs for neuroprotection. Furthermore, we studied the upstream signals for regulating the expression of neuroglobin by bioinformatic approach followed with experimental analysis. The data clearly showed that P53 might regulate the expression of neuroglobin. Therefore, our studies have provided important evidence for building the molecular network for neuroprotection where neuroglobin was considered as a key factor. Regarding the potential values of neuroglobin from basic research to clinical usage, we further developed a high sensitive ELISA kit based on the home-made anti-neuroglobin polyclonal antibody and monoclonal antibody, which is under applying for the national invention patent. Currently, the kit has been used to measure the level of NGB proteins in serum samples from clinical patients and animal models suffered with ischemic injury.In summary, we found a potential mechanism for the neuroprotective function of NGB, which is critically important for novel drugs development for neuroprotective usage in clinical treatment for stroke and other hypoxia and ischemia related diseases.