Understanding of the mechanism underlying the tissue-specific differentiation of high endothelial venule endothelial cells

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The high endothelial venules (HEVs) are blood vessels specifically found in lymph nodes and Peyer ’ s patches. Although HEVs express specific chemokines/adhesion molecules which mediate lymphocyte t rafficking across the high-walled endothelial cells (HEV -ECs), the mechanism regulating HEVs’ development and maintenance of the unique properties remain unclear. We performed microarray and real -time quantitative PCR analyses of HEV -ECs and non-HEV -ECs inneonatal mice mesenteric LNs, and identified five transcription factors which are over fifty times more abundantly expressed in developing HEV -ECs than in non-HEV -ECs. By immunohistochemical analysis, we found that one of them showed a restricted expression pattern in the nucleus of ECs of a substantial proportion of blood vessels oflymph nodes from E17.5 to the date of birth, which corresponds temporally to HEV -EC development. The gene knockout mice of this transcription factor showed reduced expression of several HEV -associated genes, implying the functionalcontribution of this gene to HEV -EC differentiation.