Podocyte-specific VEGF down-regulation and pathophysiological development.
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.
Zhang
Shuzhi
S
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.
Ji
Yan
Y
Liu
Xiao
X
Lu
Xiaodan
X
Su
Weiheng
W
Zhang
Di
D
Hao
Feng
F
Yi
Fei
F
Guo
Lei
L
Li
Xiaomeng
X
Zheng
Yaowu
Y
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*
D042461:Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A