Journal Article

How vascular smooth muscle cell phenotype switching contributes to vascular disease

Cao, Genmao, Zhang, Ruijing, Xuan, Xuezhen, Jin, Haijiang, Hu, Jie, Dong, Honglin

2022

Overview

Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) are the most abundant cell in vessels. Earlier experiments have found that VSMCs possess high plasticity. Vascular injury stimulates VSMCs to switch into a dedifferentiated type, also known as synthetic VSMCs, with a high migration and proliferation capacity for repairing vascular injury. In recent years, largely owing to rapid technological advances in single-cell sequencing and cell-lineage tracing techniques, multiple VSMCs phenotypes have been uncovered in vascular aging, atherosclerosis (AS), aortic aneurysm (AA), etc. These VSMCs all down-regulate contractile proteins such as α-SMA and calponin1, and obtain specific markers and similar cellular functions of osteoblast, fibroblast, macrophage, and mesenchymal cells. This highly plastic phenotype transformation is regulated by a complex network consisting of circulating plasma substances, transcription factors, growth factors, inflammatory factors, non-coding RNAs, integrin family, and Notch pathway. This review focuses on phenotypic characteristics, molecular profile and the functional role of VSMCs phenotype landscape; the molecular mechanism regulating VSMCs phenotype switching; and the contribution of VSMCs phenotype switching to vascular aging, AS, and AA. B-3bjxQLrZLMREQzgTDw7N Video Abstract

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,Springer Nature B.V,BMC
• Subject: Aging / Aneurysms / Aortic aneurysm / Aortic aneurysms / Arteriosclerosis / Atherosclerosis / Atherosclerosis - metabolism / Biomedical and Life Sciences / Calcification / Cell Biology / Cell Proliferation / Cholesterol / Collagen / Coronary vessels / Cytokines and Growth Factors / Cytoskeleton / Development and progression / Disease / DNA binding proteins / Extracellular matrix / Gene expression / Genetic aspects / Genetic transcription / Genotype & phenotype / Growth factors / Humans / Inflammation / Integrins / Leukocyte migration / Life Sciences / Macrophages / Mesenchyme / Metabolism / Muscle contraction / Muscle, Smooth, Vascular - physiology / Phenotype / Phenotype switching / Phenotypes / Phenotypic plasticity / Physiology / Protein-Ligand Interactions / Receptors / Review / Smooth muscle / Stem cells / Transcription factors / Vascular aging / Vascular diseases / Vascular smooth muscle cells / Vascular System Injuries - metabolism / Veins & arteries