Table 1.

Summary of galectins in central nervous system (CNS).

Type	Ligands	Cell type/Subcellular location		Functions	References
Galectin-1	β-Galactosides	Microglia Astrocytes Neurons	Nucleus Cytoplasm Plasma membrane Extracellular	Suppression of microglial activation Regulation of neurogenesis Regulation of oligodendrocyte proliferation	Sakaguchi et al. (2006, 2007) and Starossom et al. (2012)
Galectin-3	β-Galactosides	Microglia	Nucleus Cytoplasm Plasma membrane Extracellular	Microglial activation Promotion of neuroinflammation Suppression of neuroinflammation Regulation of oligodendrocyte differentiation	Jiang et al. (2009), Lerman et al. (2012) and James et al. (2016)
Galectin-4	β-Galactosides	Neurons	Plasma membrane	Axonal growth Axonal transport Suppression of axonal myelination	Cao and Guo (2016)
Galectin-8	β-Galactosides	Microglia Others	High levels in hippocampus and choroid plexus Other brain regions CSF	Immunosuppression	Stancic et al. (2011), John and Mishra (2016) and Pardo et al. (2017)
Galectin-9	β-Galactosides	Microglia Astrocytes	Nucleus Cytoplasm Plasma membrane Extracellular	Modulation of neuroinflammation	Stancic et al. (2011), Lerman et al. (2012) and Steelman et al. (2013)