yasin panahi | Zanjan University of Medical Science (original) (raw)

Papers by yasin panahi

Archives of Neuropsychiatry

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Novelty in Biomedicine, 2014

Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic optio... more Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic options against fungal infections. The present study was designed to discover new antifungal drugs. Materials and Methods: This study was carried out in two separate steps, that is, in silico lead identification and in vitro assaying of antifungal potential. A structural data file of a ternary complex of fusicuccin (legend), C terminus of H +-ATPase and 14-3-3 regulatory protein (1o9F.pdb file) was used as a model. Computational screening of a virtual 3D database of drug-like molecules was performed and selected small molecules, resembling the functional part of the ligand performing ligand docking, were tested using ArgusLab (4.0.1). Two lead compounds, 3-Cyclohexan propionic acid (CXP) and 4-phenyl butyric acid (PBA) were selected according to their ligation scores. Standard Strains of Candida albicans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were used to measure the antifungal potential of the two identified lead compounds against the fungi using micro-well plate dilution assay. Results: Ligation scores for CXP and PBA were-9.33744 and-10.7259 kcal/mol, respectively, and MIC and MFC of CXP and PBA against the two yeasts were promising. Conclusion: The evidence from the present study suggests that CXP and PBA possess potentially antifungals properties.

Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic optio... more Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic options against fungal infections. The present study was designed to discover new antifungal drugs. Materials and Methods: This study was carried out in two separate steps, that is, in silico lead identification and in vitro assaying of antifungal potential. A structural data file of a ternary complex of fusicuccin (legend), C terminus of H-ATPase and 14-3-3 regulatory protein (1o9F.pdb file) was used as a model. Computational screening of a virtual 3D database of drug-like molecules was performed and selected small molecules, resembling the functional part of the ligand performing ligand docking, were tested using ArgusLab (4.0.1). Two lead compounds, 3-Cyclohexan propionic acid (CXP) and 4-phenyl butyric acid (PBA) were selected according to their ligation scores. Standard Strains of Candida albicans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were used to measure the antifungal potential of the two ident...

Novelty in Biomedicine, 2014

Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic optio... more Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic options against fungal infections. The present study was designed to discover new antifungal drugs. Materials and Methods: This study was carried out in two separate steps, that is, in silico lead identification and in vitro assaying of antifungal potential. A structural data file of a ternary complex of fusicuccin (legend), C terminus of H + -ATPase and 14-3-3 regulatory protein (1o9F.pdb file) was used as a model. Computational screening of a virtual 3D database of drug-like molecules was performed and selected small molecules, resembling the functional part of the ligand performing ligand docking, were tested using ArgusLab (4.0.1). Two lead compounds, 3-Cyclohexan propionic acid (CXP) and 4-phenyl butyric acid (PBA) were selected according to their ligation scores. Standard Strains of Candida albicans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were used to measure the antifungal potential of the two id...

International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2016

Childhood autism is a severe form of complex genetically heterogeneous and behaviorally defined s... more Childhood autism is a severe form of complex genetically heterogeneous and behaviorally defined set of neurodevelopmental diseases, collectively termed as autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Reverse transcriptase quantitative real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) is a highly sensitive technique for transcriptome analysis, and it has been frequently used in ASD gene expression studies. However, normalization to stably expressed reference gene(s) is necessary to validate any alteration reported at the mRNA level for target genes. The main goal of the present study was to find the most stable reference genes in the salivary transcriptome for RT-qPCR analysis in non-syndromic male childhood autism. Saliva samples were obtained from nine drug naïve non-syndromic male children with autism and also sex-, age-, and location-matched healthy controls using the RNA-stabilizer kit from DNA Genotek. A systematic two-phased measurement of whole saliva mRNA levels for eight common housekeeping genes (HKGs) was carried out by RT-qPCR, and the stability of expression for each candidate gene was analyzed using two specialized algorithms, geNorm and NormFinder, in parallel. Our analysis shows that while the frequently used HKG ACTB is not a suitable reference gene, the combination of GAPDH and YWHAZ could be recommended for normalization of RT-qPCR analysis of salivary transcriptome in non-syndromic autistic male children.

Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic optio... more Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic options against fungal infections. The present study was designed to discover new antifungal drugs. Materials and Methods: This study was carried out in two separate steps, that is, in silico lead identification and in vitro assaying of antifungal potential. A structural data file of a ternary complex of fusicuccin (legend), C terminus of H + -ATPase and 14-3-3 regulatory protein (1o9F.pdb file) was used as a model. Computational screening of a virtual 3D database of drug-like molecules was performed and selected small molecules, resembling the functional part of the ligand performing ligand docking, were tested using ArgusLab (4.0.1). Two lead compounds, 3-Cyclohexan propionic acid (CXP) and 4-phenyl butyric acid (PBA) were selected according to their ligation scores. Standard Strains of Candida albicans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were used to measure the antifungal potential of the two id...

Future Virology

Novel COVID-19 is a public health emergency that poses a serious threat to people worldwide. Give... more Novel COVID-19 is a public health emergency that poses a serious threat to people worldwide. Given the virus spreading so quickly, novel antiviral medications are desperately needed. Repurposing existing drugs is the first strategy. Anti-parasitic drugs were among the first to be considered as a potential treatment option for this disease. Even though many papers have discussed the efficacy of various anti-parasitic drugs in treating COVID-19 separately, so far, no single study comprehensively discussed these drugs. This study reviews some anti-parasitic recommended drugs to treat COVID-19, in terms of function and in vitro as well as clinical results. Finally, we briefly review the advanced techniques, such as artificial intelligence, that have been used to find effective drugs for the treatment of COVID-19.

medRxiv, 2020

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are lifelong heterogeneous set of neurodevelopmental conditions w... more Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are lifelong heterogeneous set of neurodevelopmental conditions with strikingly profound male prevalence. Differences in sex biology and hormones are thought to play key roles in ASD prevalence and outcome, but the underlying molecular mechanisms responsible for ASD sex-differential risk are not well understood. Two recent studies reported a significant association between shortened telomere length (TL) and autistic children. However, the role of gender bias has been overlooked. Here, we carefully examined the status of average TL among non-syndromic male and female children with autism, and we also took a close look at the data from earlier reports. A total of 58 children were recruited for this project, including 24 apparently non-syndromic autistic children (14 males and 10 females), their healthy siblings (n = 10), and 24 sex-, age, and location-matched healthy controls. Relative TLs (RTL) were assessed by the monochrom multiplex quantitative poly...

The underlying molecular mechanisms responsible for the etiology of autism and its sex-biased pre... more The underlying molecular mechanisms responsible for the etiology of autism and its sex-biased prevalence remain largely elusive. Abnormally shortened telomeres have recently been associated with autism. We have previously shown that children with non-syndromic autism exhibit a sexually dimorphic pattern of relative telomere length (RTL). Only male children with autism have significantly shorter RTLs than the healthy controls and paired siblings. Autistic females have substantially longer RTLs than autistic males. Aberrantly high levels of oxidative stress plays a fundamental role in the pathophysiology of autism, and telomeres are thought to be susceptible to oxidative damage due to their high guanine-repeat content. Employing a quantitative PCR (qPCR)-based method, telomeric oxidized base lesions were measured using genomic DNA extracted from saliva samples, and levels of telomeric RNA transcripts know as TERRA were evaluated using reverse transcriptase qPCR technique. Our data sho...

Iranian Journal of Virology

Background and Aims: Influenza virus nucleoprotein (NP) has the capacity to be used as subunit va... more Background and Aims: Influenza virus nucleoprotein (NP) has the capacity to be used as subunit vaccine, but little is known about the impact of different cultures on its structure. In the present study we aimed to evaluate and compare the Isoelectric focusing (IEF) property of extracted viral nucleoproteins derived from Madin Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cell line and embryonated chicken eggs (ECE). Materials and Methods: Influenza virus strain A/NewCaledonia/20/99/H1N1 was propagated and grown in allantoic sac of 10-11 day-old embryonated chicken eggs, and mammalian cell culture (MDCK) in parallel. Ribonucleoprotein extraction was conducted from two separate cultures and evaluated using isoelectric focusing gel strips. Results: The results showed higher isoelectric pH in extracted nucleoproteins from MDCK as compared to embryonated chicken eggs. Conclusion: It is possible that some amino acids have been replaced. Suggesting that the changing net charge of protein may be affect the conserved regions of the protein. Therefore, this could impact the new generation of vaccines construction based on conserved proteins.

Archives of Breast Cancer

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is a prevalent disease and a major cause of mortality among women ... more Background: Breast cancer (BC) is a prevalent disease and a major cause of mortality among women worldwide. A substantial number of BC patients experience metastasis which in turn leads to treatment failure and death. The survival rate has been significantly increased due to more rapid detection and substantial improvements in adjuvant therapies including newer chemotherapeutic and targeted agents, and better radiotherapy techniques.Methods: In this study, we cross-compared the application of advanced artificial intelligence algorithms such as Logistic Regression, K-Nearest Neighbors, Discrete Cosine Transform, Random Forest Classifier, Support Vector Machines, Multilayer Perceptron, and Ensemble to diagnose BC metastasis. We further combined MLP with genetic algorithm (GA) as a hybrid method of intelligent analysis. The core data we used for comparison belonged to the images of both benign and malignant tumors collected from Wisconsin Breast Cancer dataset from the UCI repository.R...

Journal of Molecular …, Jan 1, 2011

Optimized levels of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) are critical for protectio... more Optimized levels of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) are critical for protection of dopaminergic neurons against parkinsonian cell death. Recombinant lentiviruses harboring GDNF coding sequence were constructed and used to infect astrocytoma cell line 1321N1. The infected astrocytes overexpressed GDNF mRNA and secreted an average of 2.2 ng/mL recombinant protein as tested in both 2 and 16 weeks post-infection. Serial dilutions of GDNF-enriched conditioned medium from infected astrocytes added to growing neuroblastoma cell line SK-N-MC resulted in commensurate resistance against 6-OHDA toxicity. SK-N-MC cell survival rate rose from 51% in control group to 84% in the cells grown with astro-CM containing 453 pg secreted GDNF, an increase that was highly significant (P < 0.0001). However, larger volumes of the GDNF-enriched conditioned medium failed to improve cell survival and addition of volumes that contained 1,600 pg or more GDNF further reduced survival rate to below 70%. Changes in cell survival paralleled to changes in the percent of apoptotic cell morphologies. These data demonstrate the feasibility of using astrocytes as minipumps to stably oversecrete neurotrophic factors and further indicate that GDNF can be applied to neuroprotection studies in PD pending the optimization of its concentrations.

Iranian Journal of …, Jan 1, 2010

The complex biology of Parkinson's disease and the obscure mechanism of dopaminergic cell death i... more The complex biology of Parkinson's disease and the obscure mechanism of dopaminergic cell death in the course of the disease indicate that multiple intracellular pathways and numerous crucial elements contribute to the demise of these neurons. Therefore, multi-factorial approaches would more likely confer long-lasting survival and potentiate the biological function of dopamine neurons. We are proposing a multi-directional strategy to protect dopamine neurons against parkinsonian toxicity that involve transcription, anti-oxidant and neurotrophic factors. Specifically, Nurr1 an important DA transcription/ anti-inflammatory factor, glutathione peroxidase-1 an anti-oxidant enzyme (GPX-1) and glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) a potent neurotrophic factor have all shown their capacity for dopaminergic neuroprotection. A model we are proposing is based on dopamine neuron-astrocyte-microglia co-culture that will supply all three factors in a tripartite fashion accelerating gene-to-gene and cell-to-cell cross-talks for synergy. While microglia will overexpress Nurr1, astrocytes will act as minipumps to secrete GDNF into the medium to act on GPX-1-overexpressing dopamine neurons growing within their proximity. The neurons will ultimately be exposed to the parkinsonian neurotoxin 6-OHDA and tested for their improved survival rate in vitro and in vivo, their integration capacity to neural network and their physiological function in the midbrain circuitry.

Archives of Neuropsychiatry

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Novelty in Biomedicine, 2014

Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic optio... more Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic options against fungal infections. The present study was designed to discover new antifungal drugs. Materials and Methods: This study was carried out in two separate steps, that is, in silico lead identification and in vitro assaying of antifungal potential. A structural data file of a ternary complex of fusicuccin (legend), C terminus of H +-ATPase and 14-3-3 regulatory protein (1o9F.pdb file) was used as a model. Computational screening of a virtual 3D database of drug-like molecules was performed and selected small molecules, resembling the functional part of the ligand performing ligand docking, were tested using ArgusLab (4.0.1). Two lead compounds, 3-Cyclohexan propionic acid (CXP) and 4-phenyl butyric acid (PBA) were selected according to their ligation scores. Standard Strains of Candida albicans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were used to measure the antifungal potential of the two identified lead compounds against the fungi using micro-well plate dilution assay. Results: Ligation scores for CXP and PBA were-9.33744 and-10.7259 kcal/mol, respectively, and MIC and MFC of CXP and PBA against the two yeasts were promising. Conclusion: The evidence from the present study suggests that CXP and PBA possess potentially antifungals properties.

Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic optio... more Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic options against fungal infections. The present study was designed to discover new antifungal drugs. Materials and Methods: This study was carried out in two separate steps, that is, in silico lead identification and in vitro assaying of antifungal potential. A structural data file of a ternary complex of fusicuccin (legend), C terminus of H-ATPase and 14-3-3 regulatory protein (1o9F.pdb file) was used as a model. Computational screening of a virtual 3D database of drug-like molecules was performed and selected small molecules, resembling the functional part of the ligand performing ligand docking, were tested using ArgusLab (4.0.1). Two lead compounds, 3-Cyclohexan propionic acid (CXP) and 4-phenyl butyric acid (PBA) were selected according to their ligation scores. Standard Strains of Candida albicans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were used to measure the antifungal potential of the two ident...

Novelty in Biomedicine, 2014

Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic optio... more Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic options against fungal infections. The present study was designed to discover new antifungal drugs. Materials and Methods: This study was carried out in two separate steps, that is, in silico lead identification and in vitro assaying of antifungal potential. A structural data file of a ternary complex of fusicuccin (legend), C terminus of H + -ATPase and 14-3-3 regulatory protein (1o9F.pdb file) was used as a model. Computational screening of a virtual 3D database of drug-like molecules was performed and selected small molecules, resembling the functional part of the ligand performing ligand docking, were tested using ArgusLab (4.0.1). Two lead compounds, 3-Cyclohexan propionic acid (CXP) and 4-phenyl butyric acid (PBA) were selected according to their ligation scores. Standard Strains of Candida albicans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were used to measure the antifungal potential of the two id...

International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2016

Childhood autism is a severe form of complex genetically heterogeneous and behaviorally defined s... more Childhood autism is a severe form of complex genetically heterogeneous and behaviorally defined set of neurodevelopmental diseases, collectively termed as autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Reverse transcriptase quantitative real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) is a highly sensitive technique for transcriptome analysis, and it has been frequently used in ASD gene expression studies. However, normalization to stably expressed reference gene(s) is necessary to validate any alteration reported at the mRNA level for target genes. The main goal of the present study was to find the most stable reference genes in the salivary transcriptome for RT-qPCR analysis in non-syndromic male childhood autism. Saliva samples were obtained from nine drug naïve non-syndromic male children with autism and also sex-, age-, and location-matched healthy controls using the RNA-stabilizer kit from DNA Genotek. A systematic two-phased measurement of whole saliva mRNA levels for eight common housekeeping genes (HKGs) was carried out by RT-qPCR, and the stability of expression for each candidate gene was analyzed using two specialized algorithms, geNorm and NormFinder, in parallel. Our analysis shows that while the frequently used HKG ACTB is not a suitable reference gene, the combination of GAPDH and YWHAZ could be recommended for normalization of RT-qPCR analysis of salivary transcriptome in non-syndromic autistic male children.

Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic optio... more Background: Antifungal drug resistance and few numbers of available drugs limit therapeutic options against fungal infections. The present study was designed to discover new antifungal drugs. Materials and Methods: This study was carried out in two separate steps, that is, in silico lead identification and in vitro assaying of antifungal potential. A structural data file of a ternary complex of fusicuccin (legend), C terminus of H + -ATPase and 14-3-3 regulatory protein (1o9F.pdb file) was used as a model. Computational screening of a virtual 3D database of drug-like molecules was performed and selected small molecules, resembling the functional part of the ligand performing ligand docking, were tested using ArgusLab (4.0.1). Two lead compounds, 3-Cyclohexan propionic acid (CXP) and 4-phenyl butyric acid (PBA) were selected according to their ligation scores. Standard Strains of Candida albicans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were used to measure the antifungal potential of the two id...

Future Virology

Novel COVID-19 is a public health emergency that poses a serious threat to people worldwide. Give... more Novel COVID-19 is a public health emergency that poses a serious threat to people worldwide. Given the virus spreading so quickly, novel antiviral medications are desperately needed. Repurposing existing drugs is the first strategy. Anti-parasitic drugs were among the first to be considered as a potential treatment option for this disease. Even though many papers have discussed the efficacy of various anti-parasitic drugs in treating COVID-19 separately, so far, no single study comprehensively discussed these drugs. This study reviews some anti-parasitic recommended drugs to treat COVID-19, in terms of function and in vitro as well as clinical results. Finally, we briefly review the advanced techniques, such as artificial intelligence, that have been used to find effective drugs for the treatment of COVID-19.

medRxiv, 2020

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are lifelong heterogeneous set of neurodevelopmental conditions w... more Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are lifelong heterogeneous set of neurodevelopmental conditions with strikingly profound male prevalence. Differences in sex biology and hormones are thought to play key roles in ASD prevalence and outcome, but the underlying molecular mechanisms responsible for ASD sex-differential risk are not well understood. Two recent studies reported a significant association between shortened telomere length (TL) and autistic children. However, the role of gender bias has been overlooked. Here, we carefully examined the status of average TL among non-syndromic male and female children with autism, and we also took a close look at the data from earlier reports. A total of 58 children were recruited for this project, including 24 apparently non-syndromic autistic children (14 males and 10 females), their healthy siblings (n = 10), and 24 sex-, age, and location-matched healthy controls. Relative TLs (RTL) were assessed by the monochrom multiplex quantitative poly...

The underlying molecular mechanisms responsible for the etiology of autism and its sex-biased pre... more The underlying molecular mechanisms responsible for the etiology of autism and its sex-biased prevalence remain largely elusive. Abnormally shortened telomeres have recently been associated with autism. We have previously shown that children with non-syndromic autism exhibit a sexually dimorphic pattern of relative telomere length (RTL). Only male children with autism have significantly shorter RTLs than the healthy controls and paired siblings. Autistic females have substantially longer RTLs than autistic males. Aberrantly high levels of oxidative stress plays a fundamental role in the pathophysiology of autism, and telomeres are thought to be susceptible to oxidative damage due to their high guanine-repeat content. Employing a quantitative PCR (qPCR)-based method, telomeric oxidized base lesions were measured using genomic DNA extracted from saliva samples, and levels of telomeric RNA transcripts know as TERRA were evaluated using reverse transcriptase qPCR technique. Our data sho...

Iranian Journal of Virology

Background and Aims: Influenza virus nucleoprotein (NP) has the capacity to be used as subunit va... more Background and Aims: Influenza virus nucleoprotein (NP) has the capacity to be used as subunit vaccine, but little is known about the impact of different cultures on its structure. In the present study we aimed to evaluate and compare the Isoelectric focusing (IEF) property of extracted viral nucleoproteins derived from Madin Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cell line and embryonated chicken eggs (ECE). Materials and Methods: Influenza virus strain A/NewCaledonia/20/99/H1N1 was propagated and grown in allantoic sac of 10-11 day-old embryonated chicken eggs, and mammalian cell culture (MDCK) in parallel. Ribonucleoprotein extraction was conducted from two separate cultures and evaluated using isoelectric focusing gel strips. Results: The results showed higher isoelectric pH in extracted nucleoproteins from MDCK as compared to embryonated chicken eggs. Conclusion: It is possible that some amino acids have been replaced. Suggesting that the changing net charge of protein may be affect the conserved regions of the protein. Therefore, this could impact the new generation of vaccines construction based on conserved proteins.

Archives of Breast Cancer

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is a prevalent disease and a major cause of mortality among women ... more Background: Breast cancer (BC) is a prevalent disease and a major cause of mortality among women worldwide. A substantial number of BC patients experience metastasis which in turn leads to treatment failure and death. The survival rate has been significantly increased due to more rapid detection and substantial improvements in adjuvant therapies including newer chemotherapeutic and targeted agents, and better radiotherapy techniques.Methods: In this study, we cross-compared the application of advanced artificial intelligence algorithms such as Logistic Regression, K-Nearest Neighbors, Discrete Cosine Transform, Random Forest Classifier, Support Vector Machines, Multilayer Perceptron, and Ensemble to diagnose BC metastasis. We further combined MLP with genetic algorithm (GA) as a hybrid method of intelligent analysis. The core data we used for comparison belonged to the images of both benign and malignant tumors collected from Wisconsin Breast Cancer dataset from the UCI repository.R...

Journal of Molecular …, Jan 1, 2011

Optimized levels of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) are critical for protectio... more Optimized levels of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) are critical for protection of dopaminergic neurons against parkinsonian cell death. Recombinant lentiviruses harboring GDNF coding sequence were constructed and used to infect astrocytoma cell line 1321N1. The infected astrocytes overexpressed GDNF mRNA and secreted an average of 2.2 ng/mL recombinant protein as tested in both 2 and 16 weeks post-infection. Serial dilutions of GDNF-enriched conditioned medium from infected astrocytes added to growing neuroblastoma cell line SK-N-MC resulted in commensurate resistance against 6-OHDA toxicity. SK-N-MC cell survival rate rose from 51% in control group to 84% in the cells grown with astro-CM containing 453 pg secreted GDNF, an increase that was highly significant (P < 0.0001). However, larger volumes of the GDNF-enriched conditioned medium failed to improve cell survival and addition of volumes that contained 1,600 pg or more GDNF further reduced survival rate to below 70%. Changes in cell survival paralleled to changes in the percent of apoptotic cell morphologies. These data demonstrate the feasibility of using astrocytes as minipumps to stably oversecrete neurotrophic factors and further indicate that GDNF can be applied to neuroprotection studies in PD pending the optimization of its concentrations.

Iranian Journal of …, Jan 1, 2010

The complex biology of Parkinson's disease and the obscure mechanism of dopaminergic cell death i... more The complex biology of Parkinson's disease and the obscure mechanism of dopaminergic cell death in the course of the disease indicate that multiple intracellular pathways and numerous crucial elements contribute to the demise of these neurons. Therefore, multi-factorial approaches would more likely confer long-lasting survival and potentiate the biological function of dopamine neurons. We are proposing a multi-directional strategy to protect dopamine neurons against parkinsonian toxicity that involve transcription, anti-oxidant and neurotrophic factors. Specifically, Nurr1 an important DA transcription/ anti-inflammatory factor, glutathione peroxidase-1 an anti-oxidant enzyme (GPX-1) and glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) a potent neurotrophic factor have all shown their capacity for dopaminergic neuroprotection. A model we are proposing is based on dopamine neuron-astrocyte-microglia co-culture that will supply all three factors in a tripartite fashion accelerating gene-to-gene and cell-to-cell cross-talks for synergy. While microglia will overexpress Nurr1, astrocytes will act as minipumps to secrete GDNF into the medium to act on GPX-1-overexpressing dopamine neurons growing within their proximity. The neurons will ultimately be exposed to the parkinsonian neurotoxin 6-OHDA and tested for their improved survival rate in vitro and in vivo, their integration capacity to neural network and their physiological function in the midbrain circuitry.