AUTHOR=Lee Sun-Hwa , Suk Kyoungho 

TITLE=Kinase-Based Taming of Brain Microglia Toward Disease-Modifying Therapy

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience

VOLUME=Volume 12 - 2018

YEAR=2018

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cellular-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fncel.2018.00474

DOI=10.3389/fncel.2018.00474

ISSN=1662-5102

ABSTRACT=Microglia, the brain’s resident immune cells, play crucial roles in the health and disease of the central nervous system (CNS). Depending on the CNS inflammatory milieu, they exist in either resting or activated states. Chronic neuroinflammation mediated by activated microglia is now considered to be a common characteristic shared by many neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which currently pose a considerable social and economic burden to the global healthcare system. Accumulating evidence has indicated protein kinases as important drug targets in the development of therapeutic alternatives for the treatment of these detrimental diseases. Here, we review recent findings suggesting that selected protein kinases potentially participate in microglia-mediated neuroinflammation. Taming microglial phenotypes by modulating the activity of these protein kinases holds great promise for the development of disease-modifying treatments for many neurodegenerative diseases.