High Glucose Macrophage Exosomes Enhance Atherosclerosis by Driving Cellular Proliferation & Hematopoiesis [RNA-Seq]

Hyperglycemia is a recognized risk factor for cardiovascular complications in diabetes. While hyperglycemia is known to cause microRNA dysregulation that contributes to cellular activation, whether it can do so through intercellular communication via extracellular vesicles (EVs) is not known. We investigated whether EVs produced under hyperglycemic conditions could communicate signaling to drive atherosclerosis. We did so by treating Apoe-/-mice with exosomes produced by bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDM) exposed to high glucose (BMDM–HG-exo) or control. Repeated infusion of BMDM–HG-exo led to a robust increase in hematopoiesis leading to augmented circulating myeloid cell numbers. Four weeks of BMDM–HG-exo infusions increased atherosclerotic lesion sizes with an accumulation of macrophage and apoptotic cells in the aortic root. Transcriptome-wide analysis of naïve cultured macrophages treated with BMDM–HG-exo showed an upregulation of genes associated with cell proliferation. Furthermore, BMDM–HG-exo reprogramed energy metabolism in recipient macrophages with an upregulation of glycolytic activity. Plasma EVs isolated from human subjects with type II diabetes exerted similar cell signaling when incubated with cultured human macrophages. Lastly, profiling microRNA in BMDM–HG-exo and human diabetic plasma EVs converged on miR-486 as commonly enriched. In conclusion, our findings show that EVs serve to communicate detrimental Overall design: RNA-Seq