Mechanisms of production of two new microglial growth-differentiation factors from brain astrocytes and neurons

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

To elucidate the mechanism of the pathogenesis of myasthenia gravis, we studied physiological roles of thymic myoid cells. We found two new haemopoietic factors such as an 80-kDa and 100-kDa factor in myoid cells. The antibodies raised against these factors clearly localized clusters of precursor myoid cells in the hyperplastic thymi. Both factors were capable of stimulating the growth of B-cells in a synergistic fashion with other thymic cytokines. To understand the importance of numerical increase of myoid cell precursors, we studied transcription factors for muscle cells.Interestingly,the hyperplastic thymi expressed a particular type of transcription factor. These two factors were also detected in the brain cells such as glial cells and neuronal cells and play important roles in microglial cell growth and neural cell survival. In addition, we succeeded in producing recombinant products of the factors.