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BDNF insufficiency exacerbates ALS progression.

Overview

Authors: Yihua Xu1, Ji He2,3, Shudan Wang1, Yijun Ge4, Yichang Jia5, Wei Guo1, Chen Lv6, Xinmeng Yao7, Yingying Mao7, Fan Mei8, Dongsheng Fan2,9, Peng Yuan4,10, Bai Lu1,11,12
ORCID iDs: Peng Yuan
  1. School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
  2. Department of Neurology, Peking University Third Hospital, Beijing 100044, China
  3. Changping Laboratory, Beijing 102206, China
  4. Department of Neurology and National Center for Neurological Disorders, Huashan Hospital, State Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology and MOE Frontiers Center for Brain Science, Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
  5. Tsinghua-Peking Joint Center for Life Sciences and School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
  6. 4B Technologies, Limited, Suzhou 215123, China
  7. School of Public Health, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou 310053, China
  8. Neuroscience Research Institute and Department of Neurobiology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University, Key Laboratory for Neuroscience, Ministry of Education of China and National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing 100083, China
  9. Beijing Municipal Key Laboratory of Biomarker and Translational Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases, Beijing 100191, China
  10. Institute for Translational Brain Research, Center for Clinical Neuro-AI, MOE Frontiers Center for Brain Science, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
  11. Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
  12. Shanghai Academy of Natural Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China
Journal: Cell reports. Medicine, volume 7, issue 5, article 102758
Dates: received 8 August 2025; accepted 20 March 2026; published online 20 April 2026; in print May 2026
Type: Research article · Language: English
License: CC BY-NC
Identifiers: DOI 10.1016/j.xcrm.2026.102758 · PMID 42013845 · PMCID PMC13198251 · OpenAlex W7154990057
Open access: gold, a free copy (OpenAlex)
Status: code on request
Categories: human (organism), mouse (organism), other condition (population), cellular / molecular (subfield)
Methods: Statistics
Keywords: ALS, BDNF, V66M, FUS, TrkB antibody, B90-1
MeSH: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis*, Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor*, Animals, Disease Models, Animal, Disease Progression, Humans, Mice, Mice, Transgenic, Motor Neurons, Mutation, Receptor, trkB, Riluzole, RNA-Binding Protein FUS (* major topic)
Topic: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Research (Neurology, Medicine), according to OpenAlex
Funding: National Natural Science Foundation of China (National Science Foundation of China) (31730034, U22A20299, 82471447); Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Human Brain Protection; 4B Technologies; Limited; and Shanghai Academy of Natural Sciences; Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation (L242033); Capital’s Funds for Health Improvement and Research (2024-3-3011); Beijing Physician Scientist Training Program (BJPSTP-2025-10); Fudan University and Cao’ejiang Basic Research (24FCA07) and Scientific Research Innovation Capability Support Project for Young Faculty (SRICSPYF-ZY2025105)
Citations: not cited yet (Europe PMC); 58 references in the paper
Research resources: Anti-Caspase3 (8G10) antibody RRID:AB_2069872, Anti-ChAT antibody RRID:AB_2079751, Anti-pERK antibody RRID:AB_2315112, Anti-MLKL (phospho S345) antibody RRID:AB_2687465, Anti-pAkt (Ser473) antibody RRID:AB_329825, Anti-GAPDH antibody RRID:AB_3665256, Anti-ERK antibody RRID:AB_390779, Anti-RIP antibody RRID:AB_397832, Anti-Akt (H-136) antibody RRID:AB_671714

Abstract

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease with progressive loss of motor neurons. Insufficiency of neurotrophic factors is suspected to underlie the disease, but direct evidence remains scarce. In this study, we discover that brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) val/met mutation, which results in a decrease in BDNF secretion, reduces survival time of ALS patients in two separate cohorts. Using a knockin mouse model of the ALS causal gene FUSR521C, we demonstrate that BDNF haploinsufficiency leads to shortened lifespan, accelerated motor dysfunctions, and exacerbated motor neuron death. Importantly, activation of the BDNF receptor TrkB by an agonistic antibody effectively rescues these ALS-associated phenotypes. In additional ALS mouse models, TrkB activation antibody also shows superior therapeutic effects compared to current ALS medication riluzole. Our data indicate that insufficient BDNF could be a crucial contributing factor for ALS progression, and activation of BDNF-TrkB pathway may represent a promising therapeutic strategy against ALS.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY-NC), from the paper cited above.

Code

The paper says that its authors' code is available on request: it was not published with the paper, so there is nothing to verify.

The paper's code and data availability statement is in the Data section.

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Data

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Data and code availability

• The clinical data from this study are not publicly available due to patient privacy considerations. To request access to the data, please contact the lead contact. Data access will be considered for non-commercial, research-oriented purposes only. All data access requests must adhere to the consent agreements established with study participants and comply with all applicable institutional and national regulations. • This study does not report original code. • Any additional information required to reanalyze the data reported in this work paper is available from the lead contact upon request.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY-NC), from the paper cited above.

Versions

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Version 1, 29 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 13 authors, 1 keyword, 13 MeSH terms, 8 funders, 57 references, 9 RRIDs.

Cite

This paper

Xu, Y., He, J., Wang, S., Ge, Y., Jia, Y., Guo, W., Lv, C., Yao, X., Mao, Y., Mei, F., Fan, D., Yuan, P., & Lu, B. (2026). BDNF insufficiency exacerbates ALS progression. Cell reports. Medicine, 7(5), 102758. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2026.102758

BibTeX

@article{xu2026bdnf,
author = {Xu, Yihua and He, Ji and Wang, Shudan and Ge, Yijun and Jia, Yichang and Guo, Wei and Lv, Chen and Yao, Xinmeng and Mao, Yingying and Mei, Fan and Fan, Dongsheng and Yuan, Peng and Lu, Bai},
title = {{BDNF insufficiency exacerbates ALS progression}},
journal = {Cell reports. Medicine},
year = {2026},
month = apr,
volume = {7},
number = {5},
pages = {102758},
publisher = {Elsevier},
issn = {2666-3791},
doi = {10.1016/j.xcrm.2026.102758},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2026.102758},
pmid = {42013845},
pmcid = {PMC13198251}
}

RIS

TY - JOUR
AU - Xu, Yihua
AU - He, Ji
AU - Wang, Shudan
AU - Ge, Yijun
AU - Jia, Yichang
AU - Guo, Wei
AU - Lv, Chen
AU - Yao, Xinmeng
AU - Mao, Yingying
AU - Mei, Fan
AU - Fan, Dongsheng
AU - Yuan, Peng
AU - Lu, Bai
TI - BDNF insufficiency exacerbates ALS progression
T2 - Cell reports. Medicine
J2 - Cell Rep Med
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/04/20
VL - 7
IS - 5
SP - 102758
SN - 2666-3791
PB - Elsevier
DO - 10.1016/j.xcrm.2026.102758
UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2026.102758
LA - en
ER -

CSL-JSON

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