The neuronal nucleus: a new battlefield in fight against neurodegeneration

Aging is an inevitable fact of life which brings along a series of age-associated diseases. Although medical innovations and patient care improvement have increased our life expectancy, the rate of age-associated diseases have also increased. Nervous system is specifically prone to these diseases that cause neuronal loss in different anatomical regions. Alzheimer’s disease is the best-known example of age-associated illnesses and is diagnosed by accumulation of intracellular Neurofibrillary tangles and extracellular Amyloid Plaques resulting in dementia. However, therapeutic attempts aiming at the removal of these plaques and tangles to reverse the cognitive decline have generally failed in human patients and may compromise the patient’s health. We have learnt that interruption of neuronal housekeeping systems such as autophagy contributes to formation of these aggregates, and therefore understanding the underlying mechanisms that lead to failure of these endogenous protective systems may provide valuable information and novel therapies. The house keeping systems are delicately regulated through gene expression and chromatin modifications in the nucleus, however, the contribution of this largest cellular organelle in pathophysiology of the disease has been overlooked. During the last few years, a wealth of information on neuronal nucleus has emerged that provides a strong rationale for examining its contribution to the pathophysiology of the disease. In this research perspective, I have attempted to summarize the latest research on neuronal nucleus, with a special focus on nuclear lamina damage and its downstream events to rationalize the need for focusing on the neuronal nucleus as a therapeutic target.