Targeting Tanycytes: Balance between Efficiency and Specificity

Abstract

Tanycytes are peculiar ependymoglial cells lining the bottom and the lateral wall of the third ventricle. For a decade, the utilization of molecular genetic approaches allowed us to make important discoveries about their diverse physiological functions. Here, I review the current methods used to target tanycytes, focusing on their specificity, their efficiency, their limitations, as well as their potential future improvements.specificity? This mini-review aims to describe the current methods used to selectively target tanycytes and study their function. It will also discuss the specificity, the efficiency, and the limitations of these methods as well as new possibilities for their improvements.

What is the physiological role of hypothalamic tanycytes in metabolism?

“…Tanycytes are nowadays recognized as potential targets in therapeutics for obesity and metabolic-related diseases, and future works plan to optimize their targeting (101). This interest first relies on the fact that the reactivation of tanycyte functions in pathological conditions, in particular the reactivation of ERK signaling (27,79), improves the physiological state of the individual.…”

A hyperparameter-randomized ensemble approach for robust clustering across diverse datasets

“…5f). This result was somewhat unexpected, because transcriptional continuity was previously thought to exist only between spatially neighboring tanycyte subtypes 38,55 . A more recent study provided evidence that β1 tanycytes exhibit some transcriptional continuity with both α1 and α2 tanycytes, but also indicated that β2 tanycytes were non-overlapping and transcriptionally distinct 36 .…”

“…5a) 54 . More recent studies have suggested that many of these properties may exhibit substantial continuity between and within each of these subtypes [36][37][38][39][40]55 . However, individual tanycyte scRNA-seq studies and an integrated analysis of these datasets all reported discrete groupings of tanycytes defined by hard clustering approaches 37,39,56,57,58 , with no insight into the robustness of these assignments and whether there is overlap or continuity between them.…”

Tanycytes release glucose using the glucose-6-phosphatase system during hypoglycemia to control hypothalamic energy balance

“…Next, using a microinjection syringe pump (WPI, # UMP3T-1), 2 μL of the AAV control AAV 1 -mCherry-U6>Scramble (Vector Builder, ID: VB010000-0024wah, title, >10 12 G) or G6pt knockdown AAV 1 -mCherry-U6>m Slc37a4 (Vector Builder, ID: VB210324-1260vvu, title, >10 12 G) were infused into the 3 V (anteroposterior, −1.8 mm; midline, 0 mm; dorsoventral, −5.5 mm). It is important to mention that serotype 1 AAVs do not traverse the parenchyma and, moreover, can specifically infect tanycytes [ 17 ]. All experiments were performed at 4 weeks post-transduction, and analgesia was applied following the previously described recommendations [ 18 ].…”