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. 1990 Sep;10(3):447–457. doi: 10.1007/BF00711186

β-adrenergic receptor regulation, through cyclic AMP, of nerve growth factor expression in rat cortical and cerebellar astrocytes

Joan P Schwartz 1,✉, Kathleen Mishler 1
PMCID: PMC11567433  PMID: 2174743

Abstract

  1. Type 1 astrocytes prepared from 3-day rat cortex and cerebellum express the 1.3-kb nerve growth factor (NGF) mRNA and synthesize and releaseβ-NGF.

  2. Isoproterenol (IP), aβ-adrenergic agonist, stimulates NGF mRNA content in cortical astrocytes; this increase is blocked by theβ-adrenergic antagonist propranolol but not theα-antagonist phenoxybenzamine. The EC50 for the effect of IP is 5 nM.

  3. IP increases astrocyte cyclic AMP as does forskolin, which directly activates adenylate cyclase and also increases NGF mRNA content. Cerebellar astrocytes contain about one-third as much NGF mRNA, which can also be increased by forskolin and cyclic AMP.

  4. These results suggest that CNS astrocytes can serve as a source of NGF and that the NGF gene is one of the class of cyclic AMP regulated genes.

Key words: nerve growth factor (NGF) mRNA, catecholamines, forskolin, cerebellar astrocytes, cortical astrocytes

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