2011 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Research of the role of BNP and NOTCH signals for cardiac atrioventricular valve formation

Research Project

Project/Area Number	21590205
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	General anatomy (including Histology/Embryology)
Research Institution	Tokyo Women's Medical University
Principal Investigator	INAI Kei 東京女子医科大学, 医学部, 講師 (80318063)
Project Period (FY)	2009 – 2011
Keywords	発生学・形態形成学 / 心臓発生 / 房室弁 / NOTCHシグナル
Research Abstract	Formation of the endocardial cushion mesenchyme in the atrioventricular(AV) canal is the essential morphogenetic step in cardiac valvuloseptal morphogenesis. Numerous studies demonstrated that BMP-2 signaling promotes mesencymal cells differentiation into pre-valvular fibroblasts. In this study, we showed that BMP-2 induces expression of Notch1 and Notch pathway intermediates in the endocardial cushion mesenchymal cells(ECMC) aggregate culture. We also demonstrated that BMP-2 induces the valvulogenic phenotype including hyarulonan expression and cellular migration and inhibits expression of alternative mesodermal lineage markers in chick ECMC cultures.