Our understanding of how the body communicates with the brain to coordinate their functions is remarkably limited. At the blood-brain barrier (BBB), brain endothelial cells (BECs) are ideally positioned to mediate signaling between blood and brain parenchyma via direct communication with astrocyte perivascular processes (endfeet). We develop a method to define the mouse in vivo astrocyte endfoot proteome, which in combination with BEC-specific RNA-seq, reveal BEC to astrocyte endfoot ligand-receptor pairs that are modulated when mice are exposed to a peripheral inflammatory insult with lipopolysaccharide. We show that over 80% of these mouse BEC-endfoot ligand-receptor pairs are also found in the human BBB, with a subset of them differentially expressed in human multiple sclerosis or Alzheimer's disease compared to healthy individuals. Our findings reveal dynamic BEC-endfoot communication pathways that are relevant to human physiology and provide methodology and datasets for the translational study of BEC-astrocyte crosstalk in health and disease.
Author(s):
PubMed:
41198665
Hill SA, Bravo-Ferrer I, Čiulkinytė A, Pérez Ramos N, Rossetti I, Colvin C, Beltran-Lobo P, Parra-Pérez C, Emelianova K, Dando O, Geary B, Nirujogi RS, Alessi DR, Lee DY, Lee YB, Díaz Castro B

