Set point regulation of astrocyte intracellular Ca2+ signalling

Neurodegenerative diseases are the current centre of attention in medicine due to their increased physiological and psychological burden on the ageing society and in the other hand the lack of efficient treatment to them. In parallel, nanotechnology opens possibilities to study neurodegeneration in the molecular level and uncover cellular properties at the nanoscale that possibly allow disease control using novel system biology methods. The communication between neurons and astrocytes explains how a failure in their communication impact neuronal activity, and how the intracellular Ca²⁺ signalling of astrocytes can interfere in the synaptic quality. This paper presents a theoretical investigation of a feedforward and feedback control technique to regulate the quantity of IP3 that determines the concentration of Ca²⁺ emitted from intracellular signalling. The analysis of the control model showed that the quantity of Ca²⁺ signalling can be stabilised at a desired level. A potential application is to facilitate the Ca²⁺ concentration around this desired level to maintain cellular homoeostasis for longer periods of time, which can lead to a technology for preventing neurodegenerative diseases. The proposed approach can result in novel solutions for both nanobiology and nanomedicine development, where synthetic biology can be used to program the control functionality into the cells. Other ways of implementing such technology are also explored, including nanoparticles, implantable devices and molecular communications.