Authors
Zahra Hashemi, Thompson Hui, Alex Wu, Dahlia Matouba, Steven Zokowski, Shima Nejati, Crystal Lim, Julianna Bruzzese, Kyle Seabold, Connor Mills, Cindy Lin, Kylee Wrath, Haoyu Wang, Hongjun Wang, Michael P Verzi, Ansu Perekatt
Publication date
2024
Journal
bioRxiv
Pages
2024.03. 08.578000
Publisher
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Description
Mucosal healing is associated with better clinical outcomes in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs). Unresolved injury and inflammation, on the other hand, increases pathological fibrosis and the predisposition to cancer. Loss of Smad4, a tumor suppressor, is known to increase colitis-associated cancer in mouse models of chronic IBD. Since common biological processes are involved in both injury repair and tumor growth, we sought to investigate the effect of Smad4 loss on the response to epithelial injury. To this end, Smad4 was knocked out specifically in the intestinal epithelium and transcriptomic and morphological changes compared between wild type mice and Smad4 knock out mice after DSS-induced injury. We find that Smad4 loss alleviates pathological fibrosis and enhances mucosal repair. The transcriptomic changes specific to epithelium indicate molecular changes that affect epithelial extracellular matrix (ECM) and promote enhanced mucosal repair. These findings suggest that the biological processes that promote wound healing alleviate the pathological fibrotic response to DSS. Therefore, these mucosal repair processes could be exploited to develop therapies that promote normal wound healing and prevent fibrosis.