Minocycline fails to protect cerebellar granular cell cultures against malonate-induced cell death

Experimental and clinical studies support the view that the semisynthetic tetracycline minocycline exhibits neuroprotective roles in several models of neurodegenerative diseases, including ischemia, Huntington, Parkinson diseases, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. However, recent evidence indicates that minocycline does not always present beneficial actions. For instance, in an in vivo model of Huntington's disease, it fails to afford protection after malonate intrastriatal injection. Moreover, it reverses the neuroprotective effect of creatine in nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons. This apparent contradiction prompted us to analyze the effect of this antibiotic on malonate-induced cell death. We show that, in rat cerebellar granular cells, the succinate dehydrogenase inhibitor malonate induces cell death in a concentration-dependent manner. By using DFCA, monochlorobimane and 10-N-nonyl-Acridin Orange to measure, respectively, H2O2-derived oxidant species and reduced forms of GSH and cardiolipin, we observed that malonate induced reactive oxygen species (ROS) production to an extent that surpasses the antioxidant defense capacity of the cells, resulting in GSH depletion and cardiolipin oxidation. The pre-treatment for 4 h with minocycline (10-100 μM) did not present cytoprotective actions. Moreover, minocycline failed to block ROS production and to abrogate malonate-induced oxidation of GSH and cardiolipin. Additional experiments revealed that minocycline was also unsuccessful to prevent the mitochondrial swelling induced by malonate. Furthermore, malonate did not induce the expression of the iNOS, caspase-3, -8, and -9 genes which have been shown to be up-regulated in several models where minocycline resulted cytoprotective. In addition, malonate-induced down-regulation of the antiapoptotic gene Bcl-2 was not prevented by minocycline, controversially the mechanism previously proposed to explain minocycline protective action. These results suggest that the minocycline protection observed in several neurodegenerative disease models is selective, since it is absent from cultured cerebellar granular cells challenged with malonate.