Project

Disentangling the different macrophage subsets in the peripheral nerve

Acronym
1528817N
Code
31528817W
Duration
01 January 2017 → 31 December 2019
Funding
Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)
Research disciplines
  • Natural sciences
    • Other biological sciences
    • Other natural sciences
Keywords
macrofages
 
Project description

Unlike the central nervous system, the peripheral nervous system is endowed with unique capacities to restore nerve conductancy upon mechanical injury. In this regenerative process, macrophages are thought to play an essential role. Still, in contrast to the microglia in the brain, the ontogeny and function of PNS macrophages has never been thoroughly investigated. We used a model of nerve crush to study the origin and functional role of macrophage subsets in the sciatic nerve. We previously showed that mechanical injury leads to a predominant M2 type of signature in the peripheral nerve, typically associated with anti-inflammatory, tissue repair capacity. To our surprise, confocal microscopy revealed that macrophages expressing typical M2 markers like Relma do not enter the endoneurium, but remain outside the epineurium in a rim-like structure. Other macrophages (which were Relma-) did massively infiltrate the injured nerve. This begs for a better understanding of the different subsets and their functions present in the nerve, but we are currently lacking proper surface markers to identify and sort them. Therefore, we propose to follow an unbiased approach with single cell RNA seq, followed by RNAseq, to indisputably identify and characterize in depth the macrophages driving the repair of the nerve after mechanical injury. We believe that this may pave the way to strategies aiming at speeding up the repair process.