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. 2021 Sep 17;129(7):e141-e143.
doi: 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.121.319288. Epub 2021 Aug 17.

Heart and Brain Pericytes Exhibit a Pro-Fibrotic Response After Vascular Injury

Thanh T D Pham #  1   2   3   4 , Shuin Park #  4 , Kamal Kolluri #  1 , Riki Kawaguchi  2 , Lingjun Wang  1   5 , Dana Tran  2 , Peng Zhao  1   3 , S Thomas Carmichael  2   3   4 , Reza Ardehali  1   3   4   6
Affiliations

Heart and Brain Pericytes Exhibit a Pro-Fibrotic Response After Vascular Injury

Thanh T D Pham et al. Circ Res. .
No abstract available

Keywords: brain; fibrosis; heart; ischemic stroke; myocardial infarction; pericytes.

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Figures

Figure.
Figure.. Characterization of pericytes from brain and heart after ischemic injury.
A, ScRNAseq analysis of TBX18-expressing cells from injured and un-injured hearts and brains (n=3 biologically independent samples). UMAP analysis revealed the presence of other cardiac and brain cell types. Infarct and peri-infarct pericytes cluster distinctly separated from sham pericytes. SMC = Smooth Muscle Cells, CM = Cardiomyocytes. B, Feature plots of known cardiac and brain pericyte markers confirm our identification of pericytes. C, GO analysis reveal pathways that are similarly enriched in infarcted heart and brain pericytes when compared to uninjured pericytes. We observed parallel upregulation of pathways associated with immune response, and fibrosis; pathways associated with blood vessel formation were downregulated, NES = Normalized Enrichment Score. D, Heatmap of differential genes expression. While pro-fibrotic genes that regulate ECM remodeling were upregulated in cardiac pericytes isolated from the infarct core and to a lesser extent in the peri-infarct region, we observed a reduction in the expression of genes that regulate endothelial cell-pericyte interaction. Expression value on the color scale equates to log-2 fold change of gene expression. E, Confocal images show expression of POSTN (heart) and COL1A1(brain), markers associated with activated fibroblasts, in TBX18-expressing pericytes in the hearts and brains of sham, MI, or stroke animals. Images were routinely saved from different animals in each cohort and representative images from each organ system’s infarct core were chosen. Scale bar = 20μm. tdT=tdTomato.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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