Galectin-1 plays a pivotal role promoting the vascular network development in endometriotic lesions

BASTÓN, JUAN IGNACIO; BARAÑAO, ROSA INÉS; RICCI, ANALIA; OLIVARES, CARLA; RABINOVICH, GABRIEL; MERESMAN, GABRIELA

San Pablo

Congreso; 12th World Congress on Endometriosis; 2014

World Endometriosis Siciety

Galectin-1 (Gal-1) is an endogenous lectin that plays an essential role as immunomodulatory and proangiogenic factor in cancer. But it has not been reported the involvement of Gal-1 in endometriosis pathophysiology. Thus, our main goal was to study the role of Gal-1 in growth and vascular development of endometriotic lesions. Endometriosis was surgically induced in Gal-1 knock-out and wild-type C57BL/6 mice to establish the following groups: autologous WT or KO and heterologous hWT or hKO. The number and size of endometriotic lesions, besides the histological Gal-1 expression, the relative vascularized area and the peritoneal content of proangiogenic factors were evaluated. Endometriotic lesions were generated by autologous transplantation of endometrial tissue to bowel mesentery of wild-type or Gal-1 knock-out mice for WT and KO groups respectively, by heterologous transplantation of endometrial tissue from Gal-1 knock-out to bowel mesentery of wild-type mice for hWT group, and the opposite for heterologous hKO group. The histological expression of Gal-1 was restricted to stromal compartment of the endometriotic lesions. The number of developed lesions decreased only in KO mice compared to WT and hKO (P=0.001). However, the lesions size was significantly reduced in KO, hWT and hKO compared to WT, by 72.6%, 78.3% and 59.7% respectively (P