Endothelial cell type-specific molecular requirements for angiogenesis drive fenestrated vessel development in the brain

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Abstract

Vascular endothelial cells (vECs) in the brain exhibit structural and functional heterogeneity. Fenestrated, permeable brain vasculature mediates neuroendocrine function, body-fluid regulation, and neural immune responses, however its vascular formation remains poorly understood. Here we show that specific combinations of vascular endothelial growth factors (Vegfs) are required to selectively drive fenestrated vessel formation in the zebrafish myelencephalic choroid plexus (mCP). We found that the combined, but not individual, loss of Vegfab, Vegfc, and Vegfd causes severely impaired mCP vascularization with little effect on neighboring non-fenestrated brain vessel formation, demonstrating fenestrated-vEC-specific angiogenic requirements. This Vegfs-mediated vessel-selective patterning also involves Ccbe1. Expression analyses, cell-type-specific ablation, and paracrine activity-deficient vegfc mutant characterization reveal that vEC-autonomous Vegfc and meningeal fibroblast-derived Vegfab and Vegfd are critical for mCP vascularization. These results define molecular cues and cell types essential for directing fenestrated CP vascularization and indicate that vECs' distinct molecular requirements for angiogenesis underlie brain vessel heterogeneity.

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All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data files have been provided for Figures 1 and 4.

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Sweta Parab

Department of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Sciences, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-9932-5117
Rachael E Quick

Department of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Sciences, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-2301-7238
Ryota L Matsuoka

Department of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Sciences, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, United States

For correspondence
matsuor@ccf.org

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-6214-2889

Funding

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01 NS117510)

Ryota L Matsuoka

Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic

Ryota L Matsuoka

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

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 zebrafish work was approved by the Cleveland Clinic's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee under the protocol number 2018-1970. Every effort was made to minimize suffering and distress of the animals used throughout this study.

Copyright

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.