Anales RANF

S15-01 ADENOSINE A2A RECEPTORS AND BDNF: AN INTIMATE INTERACTION REGULATING POSTNATAL HIPPOCAMPAL NEUROGENESIS F.F. Ribeiro 1,2 , F. Ferreira 1,2 , R.S. Rodrigues 1,2 , R. Soares 1,2 , H. Mira 3,4 , A.M. Sebastião 1,2 , S. Xapelli 1,2 1 . Instituto de Farmacologia e Neurociências; Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa; Lisbon, 1649-028; Portugal; 2 . Instituto de Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes (iMM|JLB); Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa; Lisbon, 1649- 028; Portugal; 3 . Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII); Majadahonda, Madrid, 28220; Spain; 4 . Present address: Instituto de Biomedicina de Valencia (IBV-CSIC); Valencia, 46010; Spain In the postnatal mammalian brain, neurogenesis constitutively occurs in two main areas: the subventricular zone (SVZ) of the lateral ventricles and in the subgranular zone (SGZ) of the hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG). Adenosine A 2A receptor (A 2A R) activation has the capacity to modulate several processes from neuronal maturation to synaptic plasticity. Importantly, most of these actions occur through the modulation of the neurotrophin brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). In this work we studied the role of A 2A Rs in regulating postnatal neurogenesis in rat hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG). Here we show that A 2A R exogenous activation with CGS 21680 promoted neural stem cell self-renewal, protected committed neuronal cells from cell death and contributed to a higher density of immature and mature neuronal cells, particularly glutamatergic neurons. Moreover, A 2A R endogenous activation was found to be essential for BDNF-mediated increase in cell proliferation and neuronal differentiation. Our findings contribute to further understand the role of adenosinergic signalling in the brain and may have impact in the development of strategies for brain repair under pathological conditions Keywords: Adenosine A 2A receptor; BDNF; DG postnatal neurogenesis; Neurite outgrowth; SVZ postnatal neurogenesis Conflict(s) of interest : Nothing to declare. Funding: FEDER through POR Lisboa 2020 (Programa Operacional Regional de Lisboa) from PORTUGAL 2020, COST Action BM1402, SynaNet H2020 Twinning Action (GA-692340) and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).