Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder for which the only licensed treatment is riluzole. Although riluzole clinical efficacy is rather limited, its use has important implications for identifying those parameters that might improve its clinical benefits (dose, timing, disease stage) and for its off-label administration in other neurodegenerative diseases, such as spinal cord injury. Studies of riluzole also have an intrinsically heuristic value to unveil mechanisms regulating the excitability of brain and spinal neurons because this drug is a pharmacological tool to probe the function of certain ion channels, or to study neurotransmitter release processes, and intracellular neuroprotective pathways. The present review focuses on how riluzole acts on brain and spinal neurons within motor networks, what mechanisms can be deduced from its effects, and what conditions may favor its use to contrast neurodegeneration or to ameliorate late symptoms like spasticity. Taking as an example the experimental neurodegeneration caused by overactivation of glutamatergic synapses (excitotoxicity), it seems likely that protection of motor networks by riluzole involves selected administration timing and dosing to target processes for releasing glutamate from very active synapses or for dampening repetitive firing by hyperfunctional motor cells.

Understanding the pathophysiological changes triggered by an acute spinal cord injury is a primary goal to prevent and treat chronic disability with a mechanism-based approach. After the primary phase of rapid cell death at the injury site, secondary damage occurs via autodestruction of unscathed tissue through complex cell-death mechanisms that comprise caspase-dependent and caspase-independent pathways. To devise novel neuroprotective strategies to restore locomotion, it is, therefore, necessary to focus on the death mechanisms of neurons and glia within spinal locomotor networks. To this end, the availability of in vitro preparations of the rodent spinal cord capable of expressing locomotor-like oscillatory patterns recorded electrophysiologically from motoneuron pools offers the novel opportunity to correlate locomotor network function with molecular and histological changes long after an acute experimental lesion. Distinct forms of damage to the in vitro spinal cord, namely excitotoxic stimulation or severe metabolic perturbation (with oxidative stress, hypoxia/aglycemia), can be applied with differential outcome in terms of cell types and functional loss. In either case, cell death is a delayed phenomenon developing over several hours. Neurons are more vulnerable to excitotoxicity and more resistant to metabolic perturbation, while the opposite holds true for glia. Neurons mainly die because of hyperactivation of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1 (PARP-1) with subsequent DNA damage and mitochondrial energy collapse. Conversely, glial cells die predominantly by apoptosis. It is likely that early neuroprotection against acute spinal injury may require tailor-made drugs targeted to specific cell-death processes of certain cell types within the locomotor circuitry. Furthermore, comparison of network size and function before and after graded injury provides an estimate of the minimal network membership to express the locomotor program.

The present study identified ATF3 as a novel dynamic marker for ependymal stem/progenitor cells (nestin, vimentin and SOX2 positive) around the central canal of the neonatal or adult rat spinal cord. While quiescent ependymal cells showed cytoplasmic ATF3 expression, during 6–24 h in vitro these cells mobilized and acquired intense nuclear ATF3 staining. Their migratory pattern followed a centrifugal pathway toward the dorsal and ventral funiculi, reminiscent of the rostral migratory stream of the brain subventricular stem cells. Thus, the chain cell formation was, by analogy, termed funicular migratory stream (FMS). The FMS process preceded the strong proliferation of ependymal cells occurring only after 24 h in vitro. Pharmacological inhibition of MAPK-p38 and JNK/c-Jun (upstream effectors of ATF3 activation) prevented the FMS mobilization of ATF3 nuclear-positive cells. Excitotoxicity or ischemia-like conditions, reported to evoke neuronal and glial injury, did not further enhance migration of ependymal cells at 24 h, suggesting that, at this early stage of damage, the FMS phenomenon had peaked and that more extensive repair processes are delayed beyond this time point. ATF3 is, therefore, useful to identify activation and migration of endogenous stem cells of the rat spinal cord in vitro.