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LRG1: an emerging player in disease pathogenesis

Camilli, Carlotta; Hoeh, Alexandra E; de Rossi, Giulia; Moss, Stephen E; Greenwood, John; (2022) LRG1: an emerging player in disease pathogenesis. Journal of Biomedical Science , 29 , Article 6. 10.1186/s12929-022-00790-6. Green open access

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Abstract

The secreted glycoprotein leucine-rich α-2 glycoprotein 1 (LRG1) was first described as a key player in pathogenic ocular neovascularization almost a decade ago. Since then, an increasing number of publications have reported the involvement of LRG1 in multiple human conditions including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, neurological disease, and inflammatory disorders. The purpose of this review is to provide, for the first time, a comprehensive overview of the LRG1 literature considering its role in health and disease. Although LRG1 is constitutively expressed by hepatocytes and neutrophils, Lrg1-/- mice show no overt phenotypic abnormality suggesting that LRG1 is essentially redundant in development and homeostasis. However, emerging data are challenging this view by suggesting a novel role for LRG1 in innate immunity and preservation of tissue integrity. While our understanding of beneficial LRG1 functions in physiology remains limited, a consistent body of evidence shows that, in response to various inflammatory stimuli, LRG1 expression is induced and directly contributes to disease pathogenesis. Its potential role as a biomarker for the diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring of multiple conditions is widely discussed while dissecting the mechanisms underlying LRG1 pathogenic functions. Emphasis is given to the role that LRG1 plays as a vasculopathic factor where it disrupts the cellular interactions normally required for the formation and maintenance of mature vessels, thereby indirectly contributing to the establishment of a highly hypoxic and immunosuppressive microenvironment. In addition, LRG1 has also been reported to affect other cell types (including epithelial, immune, mesenchymal and cancer cells) mostly by modulating the TGFβ signalling pathway in a context-dependent manner. Crucially, animal studies have shown that LRG1 inhibition, through gene deletion or a function-blocking antibody, is sufficient to attenuate disease progression. In view of this, and taking into consideration its role as an upstream modifier of TGFβ signalling, LRG1 is suggested as a potentially important therapeutic target. While further investigations are needed to fill gaps in our current understanding of LRG1 function, the studies reviewed here confirm LRG1 as a pleiotropic and pathogenic signalling molecule providing a strong rationale for its use in the clinic as a biomarker and therapeutic target.

Type: Article
Title: LRG1: an emerging player in disease pathogenesis
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1186/s12929-022-00790-6
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12929-022-00790-6
Language: English
Additional information: © The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Keywords: Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Cell Biology, Medicine, Research & Experimental, Research & Experimental Medicine, LRG1, Inflammation, Immunity, Neovascularization, Vascular normalization, Fibrosis, Cancer, Diabetes, Endothelial cell, Neutrophils, LEUCINE-RICH ALPHA-2-GLYCOPROTEIN, EPITHELIAL-MESENCHYMAL TRANSITION, SQUAMOUS-CELL CARCINOMA, CENTRAL-NERVOUS-SYSTEM, TGF-BETA, COLORECTAL-CANCER, ALPHA-2 GLYCOPROTEIN, CYTOCHROME-C, PROMOTES ANGIOGENESIS, CEREBROSPINAL-FLUID
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Institute of Ophthalmology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10142747
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