Brain Disorders & Therapy

Abstract

Activation of Heat Shock Proteins by Nanocurcumin to Prevent Neurodegenerative Diseases

Panchanan Maiti and Jayeeta Manna

Protein misfolding and its progressive accumulation in central nervous system are the common features and the leading cause of several neurodegenerative diseases. Currently no treatment is available to complete removal of these aggregates and rescue neuronal death, synaptic impairment as well as cognitive deficits. Interesting, the cell itself has a fantastic defense mechanism to remove these aggregates. One such crucial mechanism is molecular chaperones such as heat shock proteins. In general, the larger protein aggregates are removed by this system, and degraded through the proteasome or autophagy pathway. Dysfunction or dysregulation of heat shock system has been observed in several neurological diseases, which severely interfere cellular protein clearance mechanism. Therefore, maintenance or balancing of these endogenous protein clearance pathways is a promising approach to remove these protein aggregates. Several small molecules, drugs, and phytochemicals have been studied to promote the activation of this system. Recently, as a potent anti-amyloid polyphenol, curcumin has drawn special attention for the treatment of several brain disorders including several neurodegenerative diseases. It is effective to boost cellular protein clearance system; therefore, it is considered one of the most promising compounds to rectify dysfunction of heat shock system in these disorders. Whereas, because of its low water solubility and fast degradation, the bioavailability of curcumin is very poor. Using nanotechnology, recently several research groups formulated “nanocurcumin” to improve its bioavailability and significantly increases it’s therapeutic efficacy against cancer, but scanty of data are available about it’s role on boosting heat shock system to prevent protein misfolding and neurodegeneration. In this review we will discuss the current knowledge about the importance of nanocurcumin and its pivotal role on activation of heat shock system to combat against neurodegenerative diseases caused by protein misfolding.