Emphasis on practice and new achievements｜Professor Zhou Feifan’s team has made new progress in research on the immune regulation mechanism of addiction

On August 6, 2023, the latest research results of Professor Zhou Feifan's team at Hainan University, "A novel role for astrocytic fragmented mitochondria in regulating morphine addiction", were published in the authoritative magazine "Brain, Behavior, and Immunity" (a top journal in Category 1 of the Chinese Academy of Sciences) , IF=15.1). The research team clarified an essential role of astrocytic immunometabolism in morphine induced neural and behavioral plasticity, providing a novel insight into the interactions between neurons, astrocytes, and microglia in the brain affected by chronic morphine exposure.

Chronic morphine administration produces long-term neuroadaptations in NAc, which promote addiction-related behaviors in drug sensitivity and impulsivity. Morphine addiction brings a huge burden to human health and social development. However, the mechanism by which morphine leads to neuroinflammation remained obscure. This study reports that astrocytes perform a critical regulatory role in morphine-induced neuroinflammation. The dysregulated inflammation is caused by increased glycolysis of astrocytes with abnormally fragmented mitochondria, which released into the extracellular and subsequently amplifies the inflammatory response by activating microglia. Inhibition of astrocytic glycolysis using FK866 effectively attenuated morphine-induced neuroinflammation and behavioral sensitization.

This research provides a novel insight into the regulation of morphine-induced neuroinflammation and addiction, and provides a potential therapeutic strategy for the treatment of opioid addiction from the perspectives of immunometabolism and cellular crosstalk.

Fig. 1 A schematic diagram for the role of astrocytes in morphine addiction