title: Chatting with the neighbors: crosstalk between Rho-kinase (ROCK) and other signaling pathways for treatment of neurological disorders.
abstract: ROCK inhibition has been largely applied as a strategy to treat neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) and promising results have been obtained in the recent years. However, the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms are not fully understood and different models have been proposed for neurodegenerative disorders. Here, we aim to review the current knowledge obtained for NDDs identifying common mechanisms as well as disease-specific models. In addition to the role of ROCK in different cell types such as neurons and microglia, we focus on the molecular signaling-pathways which mediate the beneficial effects of ROCK. Besides canonical ROCK signaling, modulation of neighboring pathways by non-canonical ROCK-crosstalk is a recurrent pattern in many NDD-model systems and has been suggested to mediate beneficial effects of ROCK-inhibition.
authors.affiliation: Hannover Medical School, Institute of Neuroanatomy Hannover, Germany ; Niedersachsen Research Network on Neuroinfectiology Hannover, Germany.
authors.forename: Niko
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hensel
authors.affiliation: Hannover Medical School, Institute of Neuroanatomy Hannover, Germany ; Center for Systems Neuroscience Hannover, Germany.
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rademacher
authors.affiliation: Hannover Medical School, Institute of Neuroanatomy Hannover, Germany ; Niedersachsen Research Network on Neuroinfectiology Hannover, Germany ; Center for Systems Neuroscience Hannover, Germany.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Claus
keywords: alzheimer disease (AD); amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS); huntington’s disease (HD); microglia; multiple sclerosis (MS); neuroinflammation; parkinson’s disease (PD); spinal muscular atrophy (SMA)