Role of Wnt/β-catenin and Notch Pathways in rat Corpus Luteum development

ACCIALINI P, BECHIS A, IRUSTA G, BAS D, PARBORELL F, ABRAMOVICH D Y TESONE M

Congreso; Reunión Conjunta de Sociedades de Biociencias; 2017

Wnt/β-catenin and Notch are evolutionarily conserved pathwaysinvolved in the regulation of ovarian function. Previous results fromour laboratory using XAV939 to inhibit the canonical Wnt pathwaydemonstrated that Wnt is implicated in ovulation and luteal function.We established that this pathway is involved in luteal progesteroneproduction through the regulation of StAR levels. In addition, thispathway regulates the proliferation and survival of the Corpus Luteum(CL) cells and the luteal vascular development. The objectives ofthis study were: 1) to confirm our previous results by using anotherWnt inhibitor that acts through a different mechanism and 2) to studythe effect of hCG on Notch member expression. To this purposeprepubertal eCG-treated rats were injected with either Wnt inhibitor(XAV939 or ICG-001) or vehicle solution (DMSO, Control group) intothe bursa of both ovaries the day of hCG administration. Ovarieswere collected 48 hours later. CLs from one ovary were isolated bymicrodissection and used to measure mRNA, total protein or nuclearprotein levels. The other ovary was fixed for histological analysis.The level of nuclear β-catenin, which is responsible for transcriptionalregulation, decreased after XAV939 administration, as measuredby Western blot (control: 1.7±0.04; XAV939: 1.4±0.05; [n=4];P