Abstract

Renal macrophages represent a highly heterogeneous and specialized population of myeloid cells with mixed developmental origins from the yolk-sac and hematopoietic stem cells (HSC). They promote both injury and repair by regulating inflammation, angiogenesis, and tissue remodeling. Recent reports highlight differential roles for ontogenically distinct renal macrophage populations in disease. However, little is known about how these populations change over time in normal, uninjured kidneys. Prior reports demonstrated a high proportion of HSC-derived macrophages in the young adult kidney. Unexpectedly, using genetic fate-mapping and parabiosis studies, we found that yolk-sac-derived macrophages progressively expand in number with age and become a major contributor to the renal macrophage population in older mice. This chronological shift in macrophage composition involves local cellular proliferation and recruitment from circulating progenitors and may contribute to the distinct immune responses, limited reparative capacity, and increased disease susceptibility of kidneys in the elderly population.

Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in the manuscript.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Shintaro Ide

    Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Yasuhito Yahara

    Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Yoshihiko Kobayashi

    Department of Cell Biology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Sarah A Strausser

    Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Kana Ide

    Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Anisha Watwe

    Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Shengjie Xu-Vanpala

    Department of Immunology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Jamie R Privratsky

    Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  9. Steven D Crowley

    Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  10. Mari L Shinohara

    Department of Immunology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  11. Benjamin A Alman

    Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  12. Tomokazu Souma

    Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States
    For correspondence
    tomokazu.souma@duke.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3285-8613

Funding

American Society of Nephrology (Career Developmental Grant)

  • Tomokazu Souma

Duke University School of Medicine (Start-up Fund)

  • Tomokazu Souma

National Institute on Aging (R01 AG049745)

  • Benjamin A Alman

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (AI088100)

  • Mari L Shinohara

American Heart Association (Postdoctoral fellowship)

  • Shintaro Ide

Kanzawa Medical Research Foundation (Fellowship)

  • Yasuhito Yahara

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Florent Ginhoux, Agency for Science Technology and Research, Singapore

Ethics

Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All animals were used according to the approved protocols (A051-18-02 and A196-16-0) by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Duke University.

Version history

  1. Received: September 10, 2019
  2. Accepted: April 16, 2020
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: April 17, 2020 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: May 7, 2020 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2020, Ide et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 3,370
    views
  • 487
    downloads
  • 29
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Shintaro Ide
  2. Yasuhito Yahara
  3. Yoshihiko Kobayashi
  4. Sarah A Strausser
  5. Kana Ide
  6. Anisha Watwe
  7. Shengjie Xu-Vanpala
  8. Jamie R Privratsky
  9. Steven D Crowley
  10. Mari L Shinohara
  11. Benjamin A Alman
  12. Tomokazu Souma
(2020)
Yolk-sac-derived macrophages progressively expand in the mouse kidney with age
eLife 9:e51756.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.51756

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.51756

Further reading

    1. Cell Biology
    2. Immunology and Inflammation
    Kevin Portmann, Aline Linder, Klaus Eyer
    Research Article

    Cytokine polyfunctionality is a well-established concept in immune cells, especially T cells, and their ability to concurrently produce multiple cytokines has been associated with better immunological disease control and subsequent effectiveness during infection and disease. To date, only little is known about the secretion dynamics of those cells, masked by the widespread deployment of mainly time-integrated endpoint measurement techniques that do not easily differentiate between concurrent and sequential secretion. Here, we employed a single-cell microfluidic platform capable of resolving the secretion dynamics of individual PBMCs. To study the dynamics of poly-cytokine secretion, as well as the dynamics of concurrent and sequential polyfunctionality, we analyzed the response at different time points after ex vivo activation. First, we observed the simultaneous secretion of cytokines over the measurement time for most stimulants in a subpopulation of cells only. Second, polyfunctionality generally decreased with prolonged stimulation times and revealed no correlation with the concentration of secreted cytokines in response to stimulation. However, we observed a general trend towards higher cytokine secretion in polyfunctional cells, with their secretion dynamics being distinctly different from mono-cytokine-secreting cells. This study provided insights into the distinct secretion behavior of heterogenous cell populations after stimulation with well-described agents and such a system could provide a better understanding of various immune dynamics in therapy and disease.

    1. Immunology and Inflammation
    2. Medicine
    Joanna C Porter, Jamie Inshaw ... Venizelos Papayannopoulos
    Research Article

    Background:

    Prinflammatory extracellular chromatin from neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) and other cellular sources is found in COVID-19 patients and may promote pathology. We determined whether pulmonary administration of the endonuclease dornase alfa reduced systemic inflammation by clearing extracellular chromatin.

    Methods:

    Eligible patients were randomized (3:1) to the best available care including dexamethasone (R-BAC) or to BAC with twice-daily nebulized dornase alfa (R-BAC + DA) for seven days or until discharge. A 2:1 ratio of matched contemporary controls (CC-BAC) provided additional comparators. The primary endpoint was the improvement in C-reactive protein (CRP) over time, analyzed using a repeated-measures mixed model, adjusted for baseline factors.

    Results:

    We recruited 39 evaluable participants: 30 randomized to dornase alfa (R-BAC +DA), 9 randomized to BAC (R-BAC), and included 60 CC-BAC participants. Dornase alfa was well tolerated and reduced CRP by 33% compared to the combined BAC groups (T-BAC). Least squares (LS) mean post-dexamethasone CRP fell from 101.9 mg/L to 23.23 mg/L in R-BAC +DA participants versus a 99.5 mg/L to 34.82 mg/L reduction in the T-BAC group at 7 days; p=0.01. The anti-inflammatory effect of dornase alfa was further confirmed with subgroup and sensitivity analyses on randomised participants only, mitigating potential biases associated with the use of CC-BAC participants. Dornase alfa increased live discharge rates by 63% (HR 1.63, 95% CI 1.01–2.61, p=0.03), increased lymphocyte counts (LS mean: 1.08 vs 0.87, p=0.02) and reduced circulating cf-DNA and the coagulopathy marker D-dimer (LS mean: 570.78 vs 1656.96 μg/mL, p=0.004).

    Conclusions:

    Dornase alfa reduces pathogenic inflammation in COVID-19 pneumonia, demonstrating the benefit of cost-effective therapies that target extracellular chromatin.

    Funding:

    LifeArc, Breathing Matters, The Francis Crick Institute (CRUK, Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust).

    Clinical trial number:

    NCT04359654.