Research

Signals regulate lymphatic growth in development and disease

The lymphatic system plays important roles in maintaining tissue fluid homeostasis, intestinal lipid uptake and immune surveillance. Malformation or dysfunction of these vessels are associated with a number of diseases, including lymphedema. Recent studies have shown that stimulation of lymphatic vessel growth could prevent lymphedema and improve many disease pathologies, highlighting targeting lymphatic growth as a novel therapeutic approach for lymphatic related disease. Lymphatic vessels grow by active sprouting, and subsequently mature into a vascular complex including lymphatic capillaries and collecting vessels that ensure fluid transport. However, the mechanisms regulate lymphatic sprouting and patterning are largely unknown.

We currently identified novel genes that regulate lymphatic sprouting and growth. We are exploring the functions of these signals using unique loss of function mouse lines. Results from this work could provide new therapeutic approaches to prevent lymphedema and cardiac diseases.

Functional roles of lymphatic vessels in cardiovascular disease

Current ground breaking studies including us have shown critical functional roles of lymphatic vessels in cardiovascular diseases. Especially studies from us have identified that lymphatic vessels actively secrete paracrine signals to protect cardiac muscle cells from apoptosis after injury, highlighting a previous unknown lymphatic signals during heart repair (Liu et al., Nature, 2020). In our current study, we continue to determine the underlying mechanisms by which lymphatics are beneficial for heart repair.