2Department of Health Studies, FH Joanneum University of Applied Sciences, Graz, Austria
Huntington’s disease (HD) is caused by an expansion of CAG triplets in the huntingtin gene, leading to severe neuropathological changes that result in a devasting and lethal phenotype. Neurodegeneration in HD begins in the striatum and spreads to other brain regions such as cortex and hippocampus, causing motor and cognitive dysfunctions. To understand the signaling pathways involved in HD, animal models that mimic the human pathology are used. The R6/2 mouse as model of HD was already shown to present major neuropathological changes in the caudate putamen and other brain regions, but recently established biomarkers in HD patients were yet not analyzed in these mice. We therefore performed an in-depth analysis of R6/2 mice to establish new and highly translational readouts focusing on Ctip2 as biological marker for motor system-related neurons and translocator protein (TSPO) as a promising rea