A small molecule inducer of lymphatic vessel growth

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This study is the culmination of many years developing and optimising the high throughput sprouting assay, the imaging pipelines and functional validation studies. It was led by the first author Christophe Ravaud who worked tirelessly on the project and benefitted from a terrific collaboration with our close medicinal chemistry colleague Professor Angie Russell In Oxford. I’m delighted to see this study published in PNAS.

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This project was particularly rewarding because it brought together several aspects of research that I enjoy: developing and adapting a new assay, performing phenotypic screening, following up unexpected hits, and trying to understand the biology behind them. I found it particularly exciting to see how a relatively simple 3D spheroid assay could lead to findings that could then be investigated at the molecular and whole-organism levels. One of the highlights of the project was the opportunity to work closely with our medicinal chemistry colleagues, which was a new area of research for me. I particularly enjoyed working with Caroline Cuoco, a very talented PhD student, and seeing how our complementary expertise could be combined to explore different aspects of the screening hits and their mechanisms. I hope that the screening approach developed here will be useful beyond this study and contribute to identifying new ways of manipulating the lymphatic vasculature, particularly in the context of cardiac repair after myocardial infarction.

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