Abstract 535: Trem Like Transcript-1 (TLT-1) Regulates Both Leukocytes and Endothelial Cells to Mediate Immunohemostasis

Abstract

TLT-1 is a 35kd receptor stored in the α-granules of platelets and released upon platelet activation like p-selectin. A soluble form is also released. A case has been made that the protein or proteins that regulate inflammatory bleeding is stored in the platelet α-granules. We hypothesized that TLT-1 is one of these proteins and we investigated TLT-1’s role in inflammatory bleeding. Using two different models of inflammation and three different models of transmigration we show that TLT-1 mediates neutrophil transmigration across the vessel wall. In the absence of TLT-1 transmigration leads to bleeding that can be partially rescued by soluble TLT-1 (sTLT-1: see poster J. Morales). Based on these results we hypothesized that TLT-1 enhances the progression of atherosclerosis and cancer. To test this hypothesis we crossed the treml1 -/- mice with apoe -/- mice creating the DKO mouse and evaluated lesion progression over 20 weeks. Our results demonstrate that the DKO has significantly less lesions in the aortic sinus than their littermate controls (n=8/group; p <0.05). The smaller lesions are associated with less platelet activation and fewer platelet-leukocyte conjugates. Parallel studies investigating TLT-1 in the α-granules revealed a significant co-localization with pro-angiogenic VEGF and higher sTLT-1 release with PAR1 vs PAR4 platelet activation; suggestive of a role for TLT-1 in angiogenesis. We subsequently asked if, “sTLT-1 has an effect on endothelial cells?” We show angiogenic effects of sTLT-1 on HUVECs that is blocked by the addition of anti-TLT-1, demonstrating it’s a sTLT-1 mediated process. Further studies using the Lewis lung carcinoma model demonstrate that the tumors in the null mouse have significantly fewer vessels than wildtype tumors and lower infiltration of macrophages (n=15). We subsequently show that sTLT-1 partially rescues the phenotype by increasing macrophage infiltration and increasing vessel growth (n=13) and that antibodies to TLT-1 recapitulate the treml1 -/- phenotype (n=10) suggesting anti-TLT-1 may be used as an intervention. We conclude that TLT-1 regulates both leukocytes and endothelial cells to mediate vascular integrity and is a plausible target for therapeutic interventions in cancer and atherosclerosis.