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Nascent Lung Organoids Reveal Epithelium- and Bone Morphogenetic Protein-mediated Suppression of Fibroblast Activation
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Nascent Lung Organoids Reveal Epithelium- and Bone Morphogenetic Protein-mediated Suppression of Fibroblast Activation

Qi Tan, Xiao Yin Ma, Wei Liu, Jeffrey A. Meridew, Dakota L. Jones, Andrew J. Haak, Delphine Sicard, Giovanni Ligresti and Daniel J. Tschumperlin
American journal of respiratory cell and molecular biology, Vol.61(5), pp.607-619
11/01/2019
DOI: 10.1165/rcmb.2018-0390OC
PMCID: PMC6827068
PMID: 31050552

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Abstract

Reciprocal epithelial-mesenchymal interactions are pivotal in lung development, homeostasis, injury, and repair. Organoids have been used to investigate such interactions, but with a major focus on epithelial responses to mesenchyme and less attention to epithelial effects on mesenchyme. In the present study, we used nascent organoids composed of human and mouse lung epithelial and mesenchymal cells to demonstrate that healthy lung epithelium dramatically represses transcriptional, contractile, and matrix synthetic functions of lung fibroblasts. Repression of fibroblast activation requires signaling via the bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) pathway. BMP signaling is diminished after epithelial injury in vitro and in vivo, and exogenous BMP4 restores fibroblast repression in injured organoids. In contrast, inhibition of BMP signaling in healthy organoids is sufficient to derepress fibroblast matrix synthetic function. Our results reveal potent repression of fibroblast activation by healthy lung epithelium and a novel mechanism by which epithelial loss or injury is intrinsically coupled to mesenchymal activation via loss of repressive BMP signaling.
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Cell Biology Life Sciences & Biomedicine Respiratory System Science & Technology

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