Orexin neurons in hypothalamic slice cultures are vulnerable to endoplasmic reticulum stress

Narcolepsy results from disruption of orexin neurons in the hypothalamus that play a key role in maintenance of the arousal state. Underlying mechanisms leading to selective loss of orexin neurons remain unknown. On the other hand, endoplasmic reticulum stress, namely, conditions associated with impairment of endoplasmic reticulum functions such as proper folding and sorting of newly synthesized proteins, is implicated in pathogenesis of several types of neurodegenerative disorders. Here we found that application of endoplasmic reticulum stress inducers such as tunicamycin (that prevents protein N-glycosylation) and thapsigargin (that inhibits Ca²⁺-ATPase) to organotypic slice cultures of the hypothalamus caused preferential loss of orexin-immunoreactive neurons, as compared to melanin-concentrating hormone- or calcitonin gene-related peptide-immunoreactive neurons. The decrease in orexin-immunoreactive neurons at early time points (6-24 h) was not accompanied by induction of cell death as indicated by the absence of caspase-3 activation and no significant change in the number of NeuN-positive cells, whereas sustained treatment with tunicamycin for 72 h induced cell death. At 24-h treatment, tunicamycin and thapsigargin did not decrease expression of prepro-orexin mRNA, suggesting that post-transcriptional mechanisms were responsible for depletion of orexin peptides. In addition, inhibition of axonal transport by colchicine and inhibition of proteasomal activity by MG132 significantly prevented the decrease in orexin immunoreactivity by tunicamycin. Comparative examinations of expression of unfolded protein response-related proteins revealed that C/EBP-homologous protein (a transcription factor that promotes induction of apoptosis) as well as phosphorylated form of RNA-dependent protein kinase-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase (a protein kinase that mediates inhibition of protein translation) was expressed more prominently in orexin neurons than in melanin-concentrating hormone neurons, in response to tunicamycin. These results indicate that orexin neurons are particularly sensitive to endoplasmic reticulum stress, which may be relevant to pathogenic events in narcolepsy.