Molecular profiling of brain endothelial cell to astrocyte endfoot communication in mouse and human

Steven A. Hill, Isabel Bravo-Ferrer, Austėja Čiulkinytė, Noelia Pérez Ramos, Ilaria Rossetti, Chiara Colvin, Paula Beltran-Lobo, Carlos Parra-Pérez, Katie Emelianova, Owen Dando, Beth Geary, Raja S. Nirujogi, Dario R. Alessi, Do-Young Lee, Youn-Bok Lee and Blanca Díaz Castro ()
Additional contact information
Steven A. Hill: Chancellor’s Building
Isabel Bravo-Ferrer: Chancellor’s Building
Austėja Čiulkinytė: Chancellor’s Building
Noelia Pérez Ramos: Chancellor’s Building
Ilaria Rossetti: Chancellor’s Building
Chiara Colvin: Chancellor’s Building
Paula Beltran-Lobo: Chancellor’s Building
Carlos Parra-Pérez: Chancellor’s Building
Katie Emelianova: Chancellor’s Building
Owen Dando: Chancellor’s Building
Beth Geary: University of Dundee
Raja S. Nirujogi: University of Dundee
Dario R. Alessi: University of Dundee
Do-Young Lee: King’s College London
Youn-Bok Lee: King’s College London
Blanca Díaz Castro: Chancellor’s Building

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-24

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65487-4 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-65487-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-65487-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().