Signal transduction pathways of GM-CSF in neural cell lines

GM-CSF inhibits glial scar formation and shows long-term protective effect after spinal cord injury

“…These results provided cellular basis on the GM-CSF effect on the longterm functional recovery after SCI, observed in our previous reports in rat SCI model and clinical trials [17][18][19]. They also suggested new role of GM-CSF suppressing the cavitation and glial scar formation after SCI in addition to its anti-apoptotic and possible neurotrophic activities [20,23].…”

“…Our previous studies showed that GM-CSF improved functional recovery and inhibited apoptosis of cells at early times after SCI [17,18,20,23]. In this study, we investigated whether early treatment of GM-CSF could protect spinal cord tissues from progressive degenerative changes and reduce lesion volume at several weeks after injury.…”

GM-CSF protects rat photoreceptors from death by activating the SRC-dependent signalling and elevating anti-apoptotic factors and neurotrophins

“…The α-subunit of the GM-CSF-R is specific to GM-CSF, while the common β-subunit is shared between IL-3, IL-5 and GM-CSF [46]. Binding of GM-CSF to its receptor induces several intracellular signaling pathways and kinases, including the JAK/STAT, RAS/ERK, and P13K/AKT cascades, and SRC kinases [47][48][49]. SRC signalling can result in activation of down-stream cascades that control, for example, cell proliferation and survival [50].…”

“…GM-CSF is also expressed within the whole retina and appears to be involved in modulating neural and glial cell functions [49,51,52]. Its receptor is expressed within the nervous system including the facial nucleus [53], whole retina [51], and cortex [44].…”

“…GM-CSF appears to be locally produced and acts either direct on RGCs or via regulating the function of microglial cells, which are of hematopoietic origin and resemble intraneural resident dendritic cells [54,55]. GM-CSF can cross the blood-brain and blood-cerebrospinal-fluid barriers, and may act as an inflammatory cytokine with neuroprotective effects [49,[56][57][58][59][60].…”