Consequences of a Metabolic Glucose-Depletion on the Survival and the Metabolism of Cultured Rat Astrocytes.

Consequences of a Metabolic Glucose-Depletion on the Survival and the Metabolism of Cultured Rat Astrocytes. Neurochem Res. 2019 Feb 20;: Authors: Arend C, Ehrke E, Dringen R Abstract Brain astrocytes are considered to be highly glycolytic, but these cells also produce ATP via mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation. To investigate how a metabolic depletion of glucose will affect the metabolism of astrocytes, we applied glucose at an initial concentration of 2 mM to cultured primary astrocytes and monitored the cell viability and various metabolic parameters during an incubation for up to 2 weeks. Already within 2 days of incubation the cells had completely consumed the applied glucose and lactate had accumulated in the medium to a concentration of around 3 mM. During the subsequent 10 days of incubation, the cell viability was not compromised while the extracellular lactate concentration declined to values of around 0.2 mM, before the cell viability was compromised. Application of known inhibitors of mitochondrial metabolism strongly accelerated glucose consumption and initial lactate production, while the lactate consumption was completely (antimycin A or 8-hydroxy efavirenz) and partially (efavirenz, metformin or tyrphostin 23) inhibited which caused rapid and delayed cell toxicity, respectively. The switch from glycolytic glucose metabolism to mitochondrial metabolism during the incubation was neither accompanied by alterat...
Source: Neurochemical Research - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Neurochem Res Source Type: research