Protective effect of donepezil in primary-cultured rat cortical neurons exposed to N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) toxicity

Donepezil has a neuroprotective effect against oxygen–glucose deprivation injury and glutamate toxicity in cultured cortical neurons. In this study, we further characterized the neuroprotective properties of donepezil in rat cortical cell cultures using glutamate receptor-specific agonists (N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA), alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methylisoxazolepropionate (AMPA) and kainate).Pretreatment with donepezil (1 μM) for 12 h significantly decreased the lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release in response to NMDA (100 μM) by 43.8%, and reduced the LDH release in response to kainate (100 μM) and AMPA (100 μM) by 11.9% and 7.5% (without statistical significance), respectively. Donepezil appeared to inhibit LDH release in a concentration-dependent manner at 0.1–10 μM. Cortical neurons exposed to NMDA retained a normal morphological appearance in the presence of 10 μM donepezil. In binding assay for glutamate receptors, donepezil at 100 μM only slightly inhibited binding to the glycine and polyamine sites on NMDA receptor complex. On the other hand, 12 h pretreatment with donepezil at 10 and 100 μM significantly decreased the NMDA-induced increase of intracellular calcium concentration ([Ca2+]i).In conclusion, our results show that donepezil has protective activity against NMDA toxicity in cortical neurons, and this neuroprotection seems to be partially mediated by inhibition of the increase of [Ca2+]i.