Smooth Muscle Specific Ablation of CXCL12 in Mice Downregulates CXCR7 Associated with Defective Coronary Arteries and Cardiac Hypertrophy.

ABSTRACT: The chemokine CXCL12 plays a fundamental role in cardiovascular development, cell trafficking, and myocardial repair. Human genome-wide association studies even have identified novel loci downstream of the CXCL12 gene locus associated with coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction. Nevertheless, cell and tissue specific effects of CXCL12 are barely understood. Since we detected high expression of CXCL12 in smooth muscle (SM) cells, we generated a SM22-alpha-Cre driven mouse model to ablate CXCL12 (SM-CXCL12^-/-). SM-CXCL12^-/- mice revealed high embryonic lethality (50%) with developmental defects, including aberrant topology of coronary arteries. Postnatally, SM-CXCL12^-/- mice developed severe cardiac hypertrophy associated with fibrosis, apoptotic c

SUBMITTER: Ghadge SK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8198701 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature