Switching Roles: Beneficial Effects of Adipose Tissue-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells on Microglia and Their Implication in Neurodegenerative Diseases Sánchez Castillo, Ana Isabel Sepúlveda Justo, María Del Rosario Marín Teva, José Luis Cuadros Ojeda, Miguel Ángel Martín Oliva, Francisco David González Rey, Elena Delgado, Mario Neubrand, Veronika Elisabeth Adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells Extracellular vesicles Microglia Neurodegenerative diseases Neuroinflammation Neuroprotection This research was funded by the Andalusian Government, Spain (grant no. P20-01255 to M.D. and FEDER program grant no. A1-CTS-324-UGR18 to M.R.S.) and by the Spanish Ministry for Economy and Competition, Spain (grant no. SAF2017-85602-R and PID2020-119638RB-I00, both to E.G.-R.). A.I.S.-C. was the awardee of a Research Starting Fellowship for master´s students at the University of Granada, Spain. The APC was funded by MDPI. Neurological disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases, are often characterized by neuroinflammation, which is largely driven by microglia, the resident immune cells of the central nervous system (CNS). Under these conditions, microglia are able to secrete neurotoxic substances, provoking neuronal cell death. However, microglia in the healthy brain carry out CNS-supporting functions. This is due to the ability of microglia to acquire different phenotypes that can play a neuroprotective role under physiological conditions or a pro-inflammatory, damaging one during disease. Therefore, therapeutic strategies focus on the downregulation of these neuroinflammatory processes and try to re-activate the neuroprotective features of microglia. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) of different origins have been shown to exert such effects, due to their immunomodulatory properties. In recent years, MSC derived from adipose tissue have been made the center of attention because of their easy availability and extraction methods. These cells induce a neuroprotective phenotype in microglia and downregulate neuroinflammation, resulting in an improvement of clinical symptoms in a variety of animal models for neurological pathologies, e.g., Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injury and ischemic stroke. In this review, we will discuss the application of adipose tissue-derived MSC and their conditioned medium, including extracellular vesicles, in neurological disorders, their beneficial effect on microglia and the signaling pathways involved. 2022-03-25T12:38:47Z 2022-03-25T12:38:47Z 2022-01-27 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Sánchez-Castillo, A.I... [et al.]. Switching Roles: Beneficial Effects of Adipose Tissue-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells on Microglia and Their Implication in Neurodegenerative Diseases. Biomolecules 2022, 12, 219. [https://doi.org/10.3390/biom12020219] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/73774 10.3390/biom12020219 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España MDPI