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Retroviral delivery of dominant‐negative vascular endothelial growth factor receptor type 2 to murine wounds inhibits wound angiogenesis
Author(s) -
Tsou Raymond,
Fathke Carrie,
Wilson Lynne,
Wallace Ken,
Gibran Nicole,
Isik Frank
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
wound repair and regeneration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.847
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1524-475X
pISSN - 1067-1927
DOI - 10.1046/j.1524-475x.2002.10405.x
Subject(s) - angiogenesis , wound healing , kinase insert domain receptor , paracrine signalling , granulation tissue , vascular endothelial growth factor , cancer research , microbiology and biotechnology , endothelial stem cell , vascular endothelial growth factor a , receptor , biology , immunology , medicine , in vitro , vegf receptors , biochemistry
Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a potent paracrine signal for initiating angiogenesis. Although VEGF can bind to several cell surface receptors, VEGF receptor type 2 (VEGFR2, a.k.a. KDR or flk‐1 ) is the primary receptor responsible for VEGF‐induced endothelial cell proliferation. To determine whether the VEGF‐VEGFR2 signaling axis has an important role in wound healing angiogenesis, we used a retrovirus to deliver a signaling‐defective truncated VEGFR2 (tm VEGFR2) to block VEGF‐VEGFR2–induced endothelial cell proliferation in murine wounds. We show that the retroviral construct effectively blocked phosphorylation of VEGFR2 in vitro and we were able to express the truncated receptor in murine wounds. We achieved significant reduction of angiogenesis and granulation tissue formation in murine wounds, but this did not lead to delayed wound closure. In contrast, there was a corresponding increase in wound contraction, showing that functional VEGFR2 intracellular signaling is not critical for normal closure of excisional dermal wounds. Our results show a novel relationship between wound bed vascularity and wound contraction. (WOUND REP REG 2002;10:222–229)