The lung is a site of platelet biogenesis and a reservoir for hematopoietic progenitors
By Emma Lefrançais, Guadalupe Ortiz-Muñoz, A. Caudrillier, B. Mallavia, Fengchun Liu, D. Sayah, E. Thornton, M. Headley, Tovo David, S. Coughlin and 4 more. Nature, 2017
1,030 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Platelets are critical for haemostasis, thrombosis, and inflammatory responses, but the events that lead to mature platelet production remain incompletely understood. The bone marrow has been proposed to be a major site of platelet production, although there is indirect evidence that the lungs might also contribute to platelet biogenesis. Here, by directly imaging the lung microcirculation in mice, we show that a large number of megakaryocytes circulate through the lungs, where they dynamically release platelets. Megakaryocytes that release platelets in the lungs originate from extrapulmonary sites such as the bone marrow; we observed large megakaryocytes migrating out of the bone marrow space. The contribution of the lungs to platelet biogenesis is substantial, accounting for approximately 50% of total platelet production or 10 million platelets per hour. Furthermore, we identified populations of mature and immature megakaryocytes along with haematopoietic progenitors in the extravascular spaces of the lungs. Under conditions of thrombocytopenia and relative stem cell deficiency in the bone marrow, these progenitors can migrate out of the lungs, repopulate the bone marrow, completely reconstitute blood platelet counts, and contribute to multiple haematopoietic lineages. These results identify the lungs as a primary site of terminal platelet production and an organ with considerable haematopoietic potential.
Subfields: Genetics, Hematology, Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e513d48c5ab3b67cf59d475d3e6bbfff61e1a8e4
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- Daniel Blanco-Melo
- B. Nilsson-Payant
- Wen-Chun Liu
- Rasmus Møller
- Taia T. Wang
- Tristan X. Jordan
- Richard C. Becker
- M. Panis
Citations in the corpus
- COVID-19 update: Covid-19-associated coagulopathy (2020, background): “Might there be a connection to Covid-19 pneumonia? Is there a possible connection to Covid-19-associated coagulopathy? Megakaryocytes circulate through the pulmonary microcirculation and release platelets in a dynamic fashion [76].”
- Elevated Calprotectin and Abnormal Myeloid Cell Subsets Discriminate Severe from Mild COVID-19 (2020, neutral): “Given the considerable hematopoietic potential of the lungs (Lefrançais et al., 2017), the burst of calprotectin could also promote the contribution of lung megakaryocytes to disease pathogenesis in these organs.”
- Imbalanced Host Response to SARS-CoV-2 Drives Development of COVID-19 (2020, positive): “Intriguingly, unique gene signatures from SARS-CoV-2-infected trachea that were largely absent in response to IAV align with those of progenitor cells from the hematopoietic lineage, suggesting that infection may be inducing hematopoiesis (Figures 3D and S3C) (Lefrançais et al., 2017; Yoshida et al”