Endoplasmic reticulum stress inducers provide protection against 6-hydroxydopamine-induced cytotoxicity.

6-Hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) is a neurotoxin used to establish experimental models of Parkinson's disease. Exposure to 6-OHDA results in cell death associated with oxidative stress. Pretreatments with sublethal oxidative stress and some pharmacological drugs have been shown to exert preconditioning effects on cytotoxicity caused by 6-OHDA. In this study, we investigated whether endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress exerts preconditioning effects on 6-OHDA-induced cytotoxicity in human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells. Pretreatment with ER stress inducers, thapsigargin (Tg) and tunicamycin (Tm), promoted GRP78 mRNA induction and ATF4 translation, which are ER stress markers, under our experimental conditions and protected against the cytotoxicity. The protective effect of Tg was more potent than that of Tm. We also found that Tg induced the expression of the antioxidant gene heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) in a dose-dependent manner, whereas Tm had a weak effect on HO-1 induction. Flow cytometric analysis revealed that reactive oxygen species generated by 6-OHDA were more effectively suppressed in cells pretreated with Tg than with Tm. Therefore, it is likely that Tg enhances antioxidative defenses in SH-SY5Y cells compared with Tm. Because actinomycin D inhibited HO-1 induction by Tg, the induction of HO-1 may be regulated at the transcriptional level. Moreover, the specific eIF2α phosphatase inhibitor salubrinal augmented Tg-induced HO-1 expression. Therefore, the downstream signaling pathway of eIF2α might be involved in Tg-induced HO-1 expression. On the other hand, the reporter assay revealed that Tg stimulated the antioxidant response element (ARE) that is located in regulatory regions of antioxidant genes such as HO-1. Taken together, our data suggest that preconditioning effects induced by Tg mediate an adaptive response to 6-OHDA-induced cytotoxicity via phosphorylation of eIF2α and activation of the ARE.