Glucocorticoid and Mineralocorticoid Receptors Jointly Promote Vascular Development in Kidney Organoids
Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: Summary To examine the co-development of vasculature and renal epithelial tissue, we employed a human pluripotent stem cell-derived kidney organoid system. We found that cooperative signaling through the glucocorticoid receptor and mineralocorticoid receptor via hydrocortisone enabled rich endothelial cell differentiation and vessel formation. Bulk RNA sequencing analysis revealed that hydrocortisone perturbs an angiogenic transcriptional program early in development and promotes instead a pro-endothelial survival transcriptional program, with upregulation of angiopoietin 1 at both the mRNA and protein level. Additionally, we saw that hydrocortisone does not seem to significantly affect gene expression of canonical nephrogenic genes compared to our controls, suggesting its effect is largely restricted to endothelial cell differentiation. Our results show that kidney organoids offer a unique platform to study developmental signals that drive endothelial cell differentiation and vessel formation.
Authors: Cory P. Johnson, Hannah M. Somers, Sophie E. Craig, Heath Fuqua, Lynne Beverly-Staggs, Kailee E. Tanaka, Sydney M. Brown, Charles H. Toulmin, Matthew D. Cox, Joel H. Graber, Melissa S. Maginnis, Hermann Haller
Language: English
Topic: Renal and related cancers
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4414219084