Abstract:
Notch signaling is one of the most conserved pathways and is responsible for cellular processes like differentiation, proliferation and apoptosis. Notch regulates epithelial to mesenchymal transition in different types of cells including HUVECs. Endothelial cells are present in the interior lining of blood vessels. The function of endothelial cells is to regulate the blood flow and vascular integrity of blood vessels. Endothelial-to-mesenchymaltransition is a special type of epithelial-tomesenchymaltransition in which the endothelial cells lose their endothelialcharacteristics and gain mesenchymal properties. This change in phenotype and markers expression is accompanied by an increase in motility, invasiveness and resistance to apoptosis. Several studies have reported that Notch can induce EndMT in HUVECs. Notch ligands like jagged-1 and Dll4 are expressed in the endothelium and they activate the Notch receptors on the neighboring cells. Upon activation, the NICD domain is cleaved from the inner side of Notch receptors and translocated into the nucleus to express their downstream genes. Activation of Notch in HUVECs can induce the expression of snail and slug proteins which play an important role in the induction of EndMT. The expression of these proteins leads to the downregulation of endothelial markers and upregulation of mesenchymal markers. To perform the proposed research HUVECs were isolated from the umbilical cord and were cultured in 60 mm Petri dishes under standard growth conditions in a CO2 incubator. The cellmorphology was confirmed through bright field microscopy. To activate the Notch signaling the growth of the cells was inhibitedthrough serum starvation and contact inhibition. The change in marker expression after activation ofNotch signaling was confirmed through fluorescent microscopy. A significant decrease was observed in endothelial cell surface markers after Notch activation. It has been concluded that upon Notch signaling activation, HUVECsstart to transform from endothelial to mesenchymal form. Endothelium to mesenchymal transition induced by notch is one of the main key player in driving cancer metastasis. Previous research performed upto now was using immortal cancer cell lines. However, the present research project has the main aim to mimic the in-vivo situation using primary endothelial cells.
Page(s):
226-226
DOI:
DOI not available
Published:
Journal: Abstract Book on International Conference on Food and Applied Sciences (ICFAS-23) 3-5 August 23, Volume: 0, Issue: 0, Year: 2023