Yesterday we discussed myelin injury, and today we would like to cover the remyelination – a process of fixing damaged myelin sheath.
Under normal conditions, during the clearance of myelin debris the cholesterol (unlike other lipids) cannot be degraded by the lysosomal enzymes and is transferred from late endosomes to endoplasmic reticulum (ER). ER, on its turn, cannot cope with the excessive amount of free cholesterol, that is why free cholesterol is being esterified into cholesteryl esters and stored in lipid droplets.
Cholesterol exposure is required in microglia macrophages for a proper myelin debris uptake. When this buffering mechanism of lipid droplet formation is defective, microglia phagocytes do not resolve from demyelinating lesions, and the regenerative response during remyelination fails.
Details of this mechanism are described in our recent article:
#remyelination #lipidomics #MassSpectrometry #lipids #myelin #MyelinInjury #MyelinSheath #remyelination
