Human dermal lymphatic endothelial cells stimulated with VEGF-A or VEGF-C for 1h, 4h, 8h and 24h

Lymphatic vessel growth and activation, mediated by vascular endothelial growth factor- (VEGF)-C and/or VEGF-A, play an important role in metastatic cancer spread and in chronic inflammation. We aimed to comprehensively identify downstream molecular targets induced by VEGF-A or VEGF-C in lymphatic endothelium. To this end, we treated human dermal lymphatic endothelial cells (LEC) with VEGF-A or VEGF-C for up to 24 hours, followed by a time-series transcriptional profiling using gene microarray technology. We identified a number of genes - many of them not previously known to be involved in lymphangiogenesis - that clustered either as early response genes, transiently induced genes or progressively induced genes. Endothelial specific molecule-1 (ESM-1) was one of the genes that were most potently induced by both VEGF-A and VEGF-C. Keywords: Time course, growth factor comparison Overnight serum starved human primary dermal microvascular lymphatic endothelial cells (LEC; passage 5-7) were stimulated with either VEGF-A or VEGF-C for 24 hours, 8 hours, 4 hours and 1 hour. Total RNA from all samples were isolated using TriZol at time point zero (control reference point). Treatments were performed at three independent times (triplicates) for each growth factor and at each time point (except the control reference time point), total of 27 samples and labeled and hybridized using the AB1700 microarray platform.