Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: characteristics of the immunophenotype of hematopoietic precursor cells as a potential biomarker for early diagnostics of fatal disease

Abstract

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis also known as motor neuron disease is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that manifests by degeneration of motor neurons, hypotrophy and atrophy of the muscles. The causes and pathogenesis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis are not clear so far, the effective therapy is absent. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is diagnosed by clinical and neurophysiologic examination and only when over 80% of motor neurons are dead. The multiparameter flow cytometry was used to evaluate the expression of HLA-DR, CD38, CD117, CD13, CD33, CD56, CD90, CD45, CD10, CD71 in 86 samples of the mobilized hematopoietic stem cells from 54 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis cases and in 61 samples of mobilized hematopoietic stem cells from 54 healthy donors. The analysis showed differences in the hematopoietic stem cells subpopulations of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis donors as compared to those of healthy donors and allowed for the introduction of the notion of the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-specific immu-nophenotypic profile of hematopoietic stem cells membrane antigens. The profile allows for verification of neurospecific immune insufficiency at the level of progenitor cells of the bone marrow and diagnostics of the family and sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in a molecular-biological way at the earliest stage before clinical manifestation of the disease. We suppose that the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis makes its debut as the disease of hematopoietic stem cells and manifests as pathologic changes at the level of hematopoietic stem cells genome and proteome that are represented in the subpopulation composition of hematopoietic stem cells and their immunophenotypic characteristics, becoming the cause of genetically determined genuine autoimmune origin of the disease so that the motor neuron disease manifests only in the end. However, further research with larger samples and experimental check of the evidence is required.