Corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH) is a neuroprotective peptide

The corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH) is a central mediator of the human stress axis and helps to react upon external stress situations. A hyperdrive of the CRH system may lead to anxiety-related disorders including depression. On the other hand a stable level of CRH is necessary for an appropriate stress response and as recent studies show may mediate neuroprotection at a molecular and cellular level. Indeed CRH by binding to the CRH receptor–1 subtype induces neuroprotective signaling in a brain region specific manner in extrahypothalamic sites (Bayatti et al., Endocrinology 144, 2003). Moreover CRH may affect central biochemical processes in Alzheimer’s disease, such as the processing of the amyloid precursor protein (Lezoualc’h et al., Molecular Endocrinology 14, 2000) and can directly increase the expression of a potent neuroprotective factor, the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) (Bayatti et al., Endocrinology 146, 2005). As investigated in various primary and clonal neuronal cells as well as in brain slices CRH unfolds an interesting pattern of neuroprotective activities which are currently under intensive investigation.

This project is funded by a grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (BE 1475/4–1) to Christian Behl