English

Junyu Chen, an associate professor at the West China School of Stomatology, Sichuan University published the latest work "Lymphatic Vessels in Bone Support Regeneration after Injury" in Cell as the co-first author, in collaboration with Anjali Kusumbe’s research team from the University of Oxford, making important progress on the role of the lymphatic circulation system in the repair of bone injury.

The network of lymphatic vessels extends throughout the body, but a small number of sites such as the brain, eye, and bone were previously assumed to lack lymphatic tissue. This study developed a new tissue clearing technology that enables three-dimensional light-sheet imaging of hard tissue at the organ level, revealing for the first time the presence of an active network of lymphatic vessels in bone and some of the key signals between lymphatic vessels, blood stem cells, and bone stem cells in a comprehensive manner.

The researchers demonstrated that lymphatic vessels in bone increase during injury via a signaling molecule called IL6 and trigger the expansion of bone progenitor cells by secreting another signal called CXCL12. Interestingly, after injury, lymphatic vessels in bone show dynamic crosstalk with blood stem cells and specialized perivascular cells to accelerate bone healing.

These findings not only demonstrate that lymphatic vessels do exist in bone but also reveal their critical interactions with blood stem cells and perivascular bone stem cells after injury to promote bone regeneration. Thus, lymphatic vessels could be used as a therapeutic pathway to stimulate bone and blood regeneration, presenting important implications for the development of new treatments for bone and circulatory system diseases.

For more details on this study, please click the link below.

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01574-4#%20