IGF-1 gene therapy in aging rats modulates hippocampal genes relevant to memory function

In rats, learning and memory performance decline during normal aging, which makes this rodent species a suitable model to evaluate therapeutic strategies. In aging rats, insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I), is known to significantly improve spatial memory accuracy as compared to control counterparts. A constellation of gene expression changes underlie the hippocampal phenotype of aging but no studies on the effects of IGF-I on the hippocampal transcriptome of old rodents have been documented. Here, we assessed the effects of IGF-I gene therapy on spatial memory performance in old female rats and compared them with changes in the hippocampal transcriptome. Overall design: Hippocampal RNA-Seq profiles of 28 months old rats intracerebroventricularly injected with an adenovector expressing rat IGF-I was compared with placebo adenovector-injected counterparts (4 samples each group)