VEGF-C promotes the development of lymphatics in bone and bone loss. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Patients with Gorham-Stout disease (GSD) have lymphatic vessels in their bones and their bones gradually disappear. Here, we report that mice that overexpress VEGF-C in bone exhibit a phenotype that resembles GSD. To drive VEGF-C expression in bone, we generated Osx-tTA;TetO-Vegfc double-transgenic mice. In contrast to Osx-tTA mice, Osx-tTA;TetO-Vegfc mice developed lymphatics in their bones. We found that inhibition of VEGFR3, but not VEGFR2, prevented the formation of bone lymphatics in Osx-tTA;TetO-Vegfc mice. Radiological and histological analysis revealed that bones from Osx-tTA;TetO-Vegfc mice were more porous and had more osteoclasts than bones from Osx-tTA mice. Importantly, we found that bone loss in Osx-tTA;TetO-Vegfc mice could be attenuated by an osteoclast inhibitor. We also discovered that the mutant phenotype of Osx-tTA;TetO-Vegfc mice could be reversed by inhibiting the expression of VEGF-C. Taken together, our results indicate that expression of VEGF-C in bone is sufficient to induce the pathologic hallmarks of GSD in mice.

published proceedings

  • Elife

altmetric score

  • 11.7

author list (cited authors)

  • Hominick, D., Silva, A., Khurana, N., Liu, Y., Dechow, P. C., Feng, J. Q., ... Dellinger, M. T.

citation count

  • 44

complete list of authors

  • Hominick, Devon||Silva, Asitha||Khurana, Noor||Liu, Ying||Dechow, Paul C||Feng, Jian Q||Pytowski, Bronislaw||Rutkowski, Joseph M||Alitalo, Kari||Dellinger, Michael T

publication date

  • April 2018

publisher

published in