IMR Press / FBS / Volume 3 / Issue 3 / DOI: 10.2741/193

Frontiers in Bioscience-Scholar (FBS) is published by IMR Press from Volume 13 Issue 1 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.

Article

Microglia—friend or foe

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1 Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education for Experimental Teratology, Department of Histology and Embryology, Shandong University School of Medicine, No.44, Wenhua Xi Road, Jinan, Shandong, 250012, PR China
2 Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mental Disorders, Department of Histology and Embryology, Shandong University School of Medicine, No.44, Wenhua Xi Road, Jinan, Shandong, 250012, PR China

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

 

Front. Biosci. (Schol Ed) 2011, 3(3), 869–883; https://doi.org/10.2741/193
Published: 1 June 2011
Abstract

Microglia, as the immune effectors in the central nervous system, respond to pathological conditions and participate in the initiation and progression of neurological disorders such as inflammation and brain tumor by releasing potential neurotrophic or cytotoxic molecules, presenting the antigen to T cell and interacting with brain tumor. Evidences also suggest that microglia are capable of promoting or inhibiting the proliferation and differentiation of neural stem cells by secreting series of biologically active molecules. In this review, we focus on three aspects—inflammation, neurogensis and brain tumor to illustrate the multi-faceted activities of microglia in the normal and pathologic brain.

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