Reactive astrocyte nomenclature, definitions, and future directions

Carole Escartin (1) , Elena Galea (2, 3) , András Lakatos (4) , James O’callaghan (5) , Gabor Petzold (6, 7) , Alberto Serrano-Pozo (8, 7) , Christian Steinhäuser (9) , Andrea Volterra (10) , Giorgio Carmignoto (11, 12) , Amit Agarwal (13) , Nicola Allen (14) , Alfonso Araque (15) , Luis Barbeito (16) , Ari Barzilai (17) , Dwight Bergles (18) , Gilles Bonvento (1) , Arthur Butt (19) , Wei-Ting Chen (20) , Martine Cohen-Salmon (21) , Colm Cunningham (22) , Benjamin Deneen (23) , Bart de Strooper (20, 24) , Blanca Díaz-Castro (25) , Cinthia Farina (26) , Marc Freeman (27) , Vittorio Gallo (28) , James Goldman (29) , Steven Goldman (30, 31) , Magdalena Götz (32, 33) , Antonia Gutiérrez (34, 35) , Philip Haydon (36) , Dieter Heiland (37) , Elly Hol (38) , Matthew Holt (20) , Masamitsu Iino (39) , Ksenia Kastanenka , Helmut Kettenmann (40) , Baljit Khakh (41) , Schuichi Koizumi (42) , C. Justin Lee (43) , Shane Liddelow (44) , Brian Macvicar (45) , Pierre Magistretti (46, 10) , Albee Messing (47) , Anusha Mishra (48) , Anna Molofsky (49) , Keith Murai (50) , Christopher Norris (51) , Seiji Okada (52) , Stéphane Oliet (53) , João Oliveira (54, 55, 56) , Aude Panatier (53) , Vladimir Parpura (57) , Marcela Pekna (58) , Milos Pekny (58) , Luc Pellerin (59) , Gertrudis Perea (60) , Beatriz Pérez-Nievas (61) , Frank Pfrieger (62) , Kira Poskanzer (49) , Francisco Quintana (63) , Richard Ransohoff (64) , Miriam Riquelme-Perez (1) , Stefanie Robel , Christine Rose (65) , Jeffrey Rothstein (18) , Nathalie Rouach (21) , David Rowitch , Alexey Semyanov (66, 67) , Swetlana Sirko (68, 69) , Harald Sontheimer , Raymond Swanson (49) , Javier Vitorica (35, 70) , Ina-Beate Wanner (41) , Levi Wood (71) , Jiaqian Wu (72) , Binhai Zheng (73) , Eduardo Zimmer (74) , Robert Zorec (75) , Michael Sofroniew (76) , Alexei Verkhratsky (77, 78)

1 MIRCEN - Service MIRCEN
2 UAB - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
3 Department of Experimental and Health Sciences - ICREA Infection Biology Laboratory
4 CAM - University of Cambridge [UK]
5 NIOSH - National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health [Morgantown, WV, USA]
6 DZNE - German Research Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases - Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen
7 University Hospital Bonn
8 Massachusetts General Hospital [Charlestown, MA, États-Unis]
9 University of Bonn
10 UNIL - Université de Lausanne = University of Lausanne
11 Italian National Research Council [Padova, Italy]
12 Unipd - Università degli Studi di Padova = University of Padua
13 Heidelberg University
14 The Salk Institute for Biological Studies
15 University of Minnesota [MN, USA]
16 Institut Pasteur de Montevideo
17 TAU - Tel Aviv University
18 Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine [Baltimore]
19 University of Portsmouth
20 KU Leuven - Catholic University of Leuven - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
21 CIRB - Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche en biologie
22 Trinity College Dublin
23 BCM - Baylor College of Medicine
24 UCL - University College of London [London]
25 University of Edinburgh
26 San Raffaele Scientific Institute
27 Vollum Institute
28 National Children's Hospital
29 Columbia University [New York]
30 URMC - University of Rochester Medical Center
31 UCPH - University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet
32 Ludwig Maximilians Universitaet
33 SYNERGY, Excellence Cluster of Systems Neurology
34 Universidad de Málaga [Málaga] = University of Málaga [Málaga]
35 CIBERNED - Centro de Investigacion Biomédica en Red sobre Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas
36 Tufts University School of Medicine [Boston]
37 University of Freiburg [Freiburg]
38 Utrecht University [Utrecht]
39 Nihon University School of Medicine [Tokyo, Japan]
40 MDC - Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine [Berlin]
41 David Geffen School of Medicine [Los Angeles]
42 Yamanashi University
43 IBS - Institute for Basic Science [Daejeon]
44 NYU - New York University School of Medicine
45 UBC - University of British Columbia
46 KAUST - King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
47 University of Wisconsin-Madison
48 OHSU - Oregon Health and Science University [Portland]
49 UC San Francisco - University of California [San Francisco]
50 MUHC - McGill University Health Center [Montreal]
51 University of Kentucky
52 Kyushu University [Fukuoka]
53 U1215 Inserm - UB - Neurocentre Magendie : Physiopathologie de la Plasticité Neuronale
54 University of Minho [Braga]
55 ICVS/3B's—PT Government Associate Laboratory [Braga, Portugal]
56 Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave
57 UAB - University of Alabama at Birmingham [ Birmingham]
58 GU - University of Gothenburg
59 IRTOMIT - Ischémie Reperfusion en Transplantation d’Organes Mécanismes et Innovations Thérapeutiques
60 Cajal Institute
61 King‘s College London
62 INCI - Institut des Neurosciences Cellulaires et Intégratives
63 BWH - Brigham & Women’s Hospital [Boston]
64 Third Rock Ventures
65 Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf = Heinrich Heine University [Düsseldorf]
66 IBCh RAS - Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry
67 Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University
68 LMU - Ludwig Maximilian University [Munich]
69 Institute for Stem Cell Research [Neuherberg]
70 Universidad de Sevilla
71 Georgia Institute of Technology [Atlanta]
72 UTHealth - The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
73 UC San Diego - School of Medicine [Univ California San Diego]
74 UFRGS - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul [Porto Alegre]
75 University of Ljubljana
76 UCLA - University of California [Los Angeles]
77 University of Manchester [Manchester]
78 Ikerbasque - Basque Foundation for Science

Reactive astrocytes are astrocytes undergoing morphological, molecular, and functional remodeling in response to injury, disease, or infection of the CNS. Although this remodeling was first described over a century ago, uncertainties and controversies remain regarding the contribution of reactive astrocytes to CNS diseases, repair, and aging. It is also unclear whether fixed categories of reactive astrocytes exist and, if so, how to identify them. We point out the shortcomings of binary divisions of reactive astrocytes into good-vs-bad, neurotoxic-vs-neuroprotective or A1-vs-A2. We advocate, instead, that research on reactive astrocytes include assessment of multiple molecular and functional parameters-preferably in vivo-plus multivariate statistics and determination of impact on pathological hallmarks in relevant models. These guidelines may spur the discovery of astrocyte-based biomarkers as well as astrocyte-targeting therapies that abrogate detrimental actions of reactive astrocytes, potentiate their neuro- and glioprotective actions, and restore or augment their homeostatic, modulatory, and defensive functions.

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]

Carole Escartin, Elena Galea, András Lakatos, James O’callaghan, Gabor Petzold, et al.. Reactive astrocyte nomenclature, definitions, and future directions. Nature Neuroscience, 2021, 24 (3), pp.312-325. ⟨10.1038/s41593-020-00783-4⟩. ⟨hal-03372664⟩