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Tissue plasminogen activator and NMDA receptor cleavage

Nature Medicine volume 9, pages 371–372 (2003)Cite this article

To the editor

It is established that the serine protease tissue plasminogen activator (TPA) and its conventional zymogen substrate plasminogen have an important role in certain central nervous system pathologies related to neuronal death (ref. 1 and references therein). Studies of rodents indicate that TPA and plasminogen synthesized locally2 or entering brain tissue through a compromised blood-brain barrier1 can be involved in this phenomenon. Whereas some of these central effects of TPA are associated with the conversion of plasminogen to plasmin, others are independent of plasminogen activation (reviewed in ref. 3). The identity of the substrate(s) for TPA that could mediate the action of this protease in the absence of plasminogen is still a matter of debate.

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Figure 1: Binding of anti-NR1 antibodies to plasminogen and NR1 subunit cleavage by plasmin.

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  1. Laboratory of Neurobiology and Genetics The Rockefeller University, New York, New York, USA

    Tomasz Matys & Sidney Strickland

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Correspondence to Sidney Strickland.

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Matys, T., Strickland, S. Tissue plasminogen activator and NMDA receptor cleavage. Nat Med 9, 371–372 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0403-371

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