Neuronal cell death, nerve growth factor and neurotrophic models: 50 years on

Viktor Hamburger has just died at the age of 100. It is 50 years since he and Rita Levi-Montalcini laid the foundations for the study of naturally occurring cell death and of neurotrophic factors in the nervous system. In a period of less than 10 years, from 1949 to 1958, Hamburger and Levi-Montalci...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Autonomic Neuroscience: Basic and Clinical 2002-01, Vol.95 (1), p.1-23
Main Authors: Bennett, M.R, Gibson, W.G, Lemon, G
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Apoptosis
Calcium
Cell Communication - physiology
Cell death
Cell Death - physiology
Growth factors
Humans
Models, Neurological
Nerve Growth Factors - metabolism
Nerve Net - cytology
Nerve Net - embryology
Nerve Net - metabolism
Nervous System - cytology
Nervous System - embryology
Nervous System - metabolism
Neuroglia - cytology
Neuroglia - metabolism
Neurons - cytology
Neurons - metabolism
Synapses
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Viktor Hamburger has just died at the age of 100. It is 50 years since he and Rita Levi-Montalcini laid the foundations for the study of naturally occurring cell death and of neurotrophic factors in the nervous system. In a period of less than 10 years, from 1949 to 1958, Hamburger and Levi-Montalcini made the following seminal discoveries: that neuron cell death occurs in dorsal root ganglia, sympathetic ganglia and the cervical column of motoneurons; that the predictions arising from this observation, namely that survival is dependent on the supply of a trophic factor, could be substantiated by studying the effects of a sarcoma on the proliferation of ganglionic processes both in vivo and in vitro; and that the proliferation of these processes could be used as an assay system to isolate the factor. This work provides a short review mostly of the early history of this subject in the context of the Hamburger/Levi-Montalcini paradigm. This acts as an introduction to a consideration of models that have been proposed to account for how the different sources of growth factors provide for the survival of neurons during development. It is suggested that what has been called the ‘social-control’ model provides the most parsimonious quantitative description of the contribution of trophic factors to neuronal survival, a concept for which we are in debt to Viktor Hamburger and Rita Levi-Montalcini.
ISSN:1566-0702
1872-7484
DOI:10.1016/S1566-0702(01)00358-7