Volume 3 Issue 4, April 2024

The eye and the brain are both recognized as immune-privileged sites. Research now indicates that responses in the eye mirror those in the central nervous system (CNS), offering major implications for the treatment of CNS cancers and infections.

Acute depletion of meningeal lymphatic vessels impairs the clearance of cerebrospinal fluid and brain macromolecules. A new study by Antila et al. shows that amyloid pathology in Alzheimer’s disease is neither improved nor aggravated by genetic expansion or depletion of meningeal lymphatic vessels.

Adult hearts have inherently limited regenerative capabilities, such that injury results in lasting damage. The situation is different in neonatal mouse hearts, however, where a new study reveals a role for the immunomodulatory PD-1–PD-L1 pathway in regulating regeneration after injury.

High-throughput sequencing technologies have revolutionized the study of transcription across cell types and many biological phenomena. Brash et al. have developed a resource based on 240 endothelial bulk RNA-sequencing datasets that uses machine learning to predict whether a gene is the product of leaky or active transcription.

On 21–23 September 2023, the Immuno-Cardiology Symposium was hosted by the Leducq Foundation Networks of Excellence Program (The Inflammatory-Fibrosis Axis in Adverse LV Remodeling: translating mechanisms into new diagnostics and therapeutics) at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. The symposium highlighted recent advances in the basic science of dysregulated immune system activation and fibrosis in response to cardiac injury.

Human pluripotent stem cells have been shown to be important models for interrogating the molecular basis for heart disease. This review highlights the contributions of these models to our understanding of inherited arrhythmia syndromes, with a focus on integrating mechanistic and genome-wide association study data.

In a retrospective cohort study examining the comparative effectiveness of diabetes drugs in adults at moderate risk for cardiovascular disease, GLP-1 receptor agonists and SGLT2 inhibitors reduced the risk of cardiovascular events compared to DPP4 inhibitors, whereas sulfonylureas increased the risk.

Hu et al. describe how histone H1.0 regulates myofibroblast activation, linking force generation to nuclear organization and gene transcription.

Brash et al. created the BulkECexplorer, an online tool based on 240 endothelial bulk RNA-seq datasets, which predicts active or leaky gene expression in five vascular endothelial cell subtypes.

Antila et al. show that brain amyloid-β load is not significantly affected by sustained dural lymphatic vessel atrophy or hyperplasia induced by lymphangiogenic growth factor manipulation in two mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease.