title: Podocyte-specific VEGF down-regulation and pathophysiological development.
abstract: It is well-known that vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plays a key role in development and pathology, but its function in normal adult tissues is rarely understood. Increased use of anti-angiogenic therapies targeting VEGF in human pathologies have shown more and more adverse effects. In this report, a conditional expression model (Tet-On system) was used to down-regulate podocyte VEGF in adult mice, which resulted in many kidney problems, characterized by glomerular morphological changes, proteinuria, reduced water consumption and urination, increased urine electro-conductivity, as well as high susceptibility to BSA stress. Our findings indicated that podocyte-specific VEGF down-regulation resulted in poor kidney performance and led mice to be more susceptible to further kidney damages.
authors.affiliation: National Engineering Laboratory for Druggable Gene and Protein Screening, The Institute of Genetics and Cytology, School of Life Sciences, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Shuzhi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ji
authors.forename: Xiao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xiaodan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Weiheng
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Su
authors.forename: Di
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hao
authors.forename: Fei
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Yi
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Xiaomeng
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Yaowu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zheng
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015153:Blotting, Western; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D015536:Down-Regulation; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D007678:Kidney Glomerulus / Q000473:pathology*; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D050199:Podocytes / Q000473:pathology; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D042461:Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D042461:Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A