[Mar. 19] 136th IRCMS Seminar

March 2 2026

We would like to inform you that the 136th IRCMS seminar has been scheduled as below.
* This IRCMS seminar is open to everyone.

Date      : March 19, 2026 (Thursday)

Time      : 16:00-17:00

ZOOM　: Meeting ID: 947 7291 2115

　　　　Passcode:  Sem19Mar

Speaker : Dr. Ryo Sato (Kumamoto University Hospital)

Title        : Pericytes as key regulators of the lung repair process

Abstract:

The lung is continuously exposed to external stressors and depends on tightly regulated repair mechanisms. Lung repair proceeds through inflammation, fibrosis, and regeneration, and disruption of any phase can lead to chronic lung disease. Excessive or prolonged fibrosis directly drives pulmonary fibrosis, including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), making its control a central therapeutic goal. In this talk, I will introduce fibrosis-associated lung pericytes, characterized by the expression of β-III tubulin (Tuj1). Most pericytes in fibrotic regions are Tuj1-positive and interact uniquely with multiple endothelial cells, localizing near collagen-producing fibroblasts and pro-fibrotic SPP1+/arginase+ macrophages. Tuj1 expression is predominantly induced in pericytes during the fibrotic phase, and Tuj1 gene (Tubb3) knockout in mice exacerbates lung fibrosis, accompanied by an increase in the neighboring pro-fibrotic fibroblasts and macrophages, suggesting an anti-fibrotic role for Tuj1-expressing pericytes. Mechanistically, the anti-fibrotic chemokine CXCL10 is upregulated in Tuj1-expressing pericytes, whereas this upregulation is not observed in Tubb3 knockout. Moreover, CXCL10 inhibits the pro-fibrotic differentiation of macrophages induced by lung fibroblasts in culture, implying that CXCL10 may mediate the anti-fibrotic effects of Tuj1-expressing pericytes. These findings underscore the role of lung pericytes in negatively regulating fibrotic process and their potential as therapeutic targets for pulmonary fibrosis patients.

Major papers:

1. Ryo Sato, Kosuke Imamura, Tatsuya Tsukui, Teruhiko Yoshida, Yusuke Tomita, Kosuke Fujino, Tokunori Ikeda, Keigo Onizawa, Takumi Sogo, Christian A. Combs, Meera Murgai, Jeffrey B. Kopp, Makoto Suzuki, Takuro Sakagami, Dean Sheppard, Yoh-suke Mukouyama. β-III tubulin identifies anti-fibrotic state of pericytes in pulmonary fibrosis. Research Square 2025. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8138421/v1
2. Azaan Rehman, Alexander Zhovmer, Ryo Sato, Yoh-suke Mukouyama, Jiji Chen, Alberto Rissone, Rosa Puertollano, Jiamin Liu, Harshad D. Vishwasrao, Hari Shroff, Christian A. Combs, Hui Xue. Convolutional neural network transformer (CNNT) for fluorescence microscopy image denoising with improved generalization and fast adaptation. Scientific Reports. Aug 6;14(1):18184. (2024)