Murine model for Parkinson's disease: from 6-OH dopamine lesion to behavioral test

Parkinson's disease (PD) affects at least 6.5 million people worldwide, irrespective of gender, social, ethnic, economic, or geographic boundaries. Key symptoms, such as tremor, rigidity and bradikinesia, develop when about 3/4 of dopaminergic cells are lost in the substantia nigra, and fail to provide for the smooth, coordinated regulation of striatal motor circuits. Depression and hallucinations are common, and dementia eventually occurs in 20% of patients. At this time, there is no treatment to delay or stop the progression of PD. Rather, the medications currently available aim more towards the alleviation of these symptoms. New surgical strategies may reversibly switch on the functionally damaged circuits through the electrical stimulation of deep brain structures, but although deep brain stimulation is a major advance, it is not suitable for all patients. It remains therefore necessary to test new cell therapy approaches in preclinical models. Selective neurotoxic disruption of dopaminergic pathways can be reproduced by injection of 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) or MPTP (1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tertahydropyridine) whereas depleting drugs and oxidative-damaging chemicals may also reproduce specific features of PD in rodents. Unlike MPTP, 6-OHDA lesions cause massive irreversible neuronal loss, and can be uni- or bilateral. The 6-OHDA lesion model is reliable, leads to robust motor deficits, and is the most widely used after 40 years of research in rats. As interactions between grafted cells and host can now be studied more thoroughly in mice rather than in rats, the model has been transposed to mice, where it has been recently characterized. In this video, we demonstrate how to lesion the left nigro-striatal pathway of anesthetized mice by slowly delivering 2.0 microL of 6-OHDA through a stereotaxically inserted micro-syringe needle. The loss of dopaminergic input occurs within days, and the functional impairments can be monitored over post-operative weeks and months by rating animal rotations induced by dopaminergic agents. Here, we show full-body contralateral rotations occurring 10 minutes after a single subcutaneous administration of apomorphine, measured one month after the lesion. Outcomes and drawbacks are discussed below.