Expression and Role of the TrkA Receptor in Pulmonary Inflammatory Diseases

Role of Nerve Growth Factor in Development and Persistence of Experimental Pulmonary Hypertension

“…Therefore, our findings suggest that NGF may represent a target of particular interest in future PH therapeutic strategy. In this study, NGF and its receptors were expressed in pulmonary arteries from control rats or from control patients, in accordance with the literature (14,25) and with previous results from our group (26).…”

“…We previously demonstrated that NGF induced proliferation and migration of hPASMCs and hPAECs in vitro (26). These results are in accordance with the ability of NGF to induce proliferation and/or migration of endothelial or smooth muscle cells from various tissues (15,16,54,55).…”

“…Moreover, NGF expression is up-regulated under inflammatory conditions in airway structural cells (18,33,34). Pulmonary vascular cells can secrete NGF (26), and may also contribute to NGF increased expression in inflammatory conditions (35)(36)(37)(38). However, pulmonary inflammation differs according to the form of PH, and different inflammatory mechanisms may therefore also contribute to the differences in NGF expression observed in patients with PH-COPD versus patients with IPAH (28,37).…”

Inflammation and Oxidative Stress Induce NGF Secretion by Pulmonary Arterial Cells through a TGF-β1-Dependent Mechanism

“…We focused on pulmonary arterial structural cells (namely PASMC and PAEC) as a possible source of increased NGF in pulmonary arteries. Indeed, we have previously shown that both PASMC and PAEC express NGF [ 5 , 9 ]. Inflammation, a critical PH pathological feature [ 10 , 11 , 12 ], can trigger NGF secretion from different cell types outside the lung, for example, urothelial cells [ 13 ], synovial fibroblasts [ 14 ], chondrocytes [ 15 ], or various cells of the gastrointestinal tract [ 16 , 17 , 18 ].…”