Abstract
Over the last decades, myocardial infarction and heart failure have accounted every year for millions of deaths worldwide. After a coronary occlusion, the lack of blood supply to downstream muscle leads to cell death and scarring. To date, several pro-angiogenic factors have been tested to stimulate reperfusion of the affected myocardium, VEGFA being one of the most extensively studied. Given the unsuccessful outcomes of clinical trials, understanding how cardiac revascularization takes place in models with endogenous regenerative capacity holds the key to devising more efficient therapies. Here, we summarize the main findings on VEGFA’s role during cardiac repair and regeneration, with a particular focus on zebrafish as a regenerative model. Moreover, we provide a comprehensive overview of available tools to modulate Vegfa expression and action in zebrafish regeneration studies. Understanding the role of Vegfa during zebrafish heart regeneration may help devise efficient therapies and circumvent current limitations in using VEGFA for therapeutic angiogenesis approaches.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Michelle Collins, Stephanie Larrivée-Vanier, Hadil El-Sammak, and Armaan Mehra for comments on the manuscript and discussions. The research in Lai group is supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST 108-2320-B-001-032-MY2) and the IBMS/Academia Sinica (IBMS-CRC108-P03) in Taiwan. Kaushik Chowdhury is the recipient of the AS-TIGP Research Progress Fellowship. The Marín-Juez lab is currently supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (PJT-178037).
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Chowdhury, K., Lai, SL., Marín-Juez, R. (2022). Modulation of VEGFA Signaling During Heart Regeneration in Zebrafish. In: Fiedler, L.R., Pellet-Many, C. (eds) VEGF Signaling. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2475. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2217-9_22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2217-9_22
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