{"doi":"10.17615/c7e9-mq69","title":"Rho Kinase Inhibition Rescues the Endothelial Cell Cerebral Cavernous Malformation Phenotype","abstract":"Cerebral cavernous malformations (CCM) are vascular lesions causing seizures and stroke. Mutations causing inactivation of one of three genes, ccm1, -2, or -3, are sufficient to induce vascular endothelial cell defects resulting in CCM. Herein, we show that loss of expression of the CCM1, -2, or -3 proteins causes a marked increase in expression of the GTPase RhoA. Live cell imaging with a RhoA-specific biosensor demonstrates increased RhoA activity with loss of CCM1, -2, or -3, with an especially pronounced RhoA activation in both the cytosol and the nucleus with loss of CCM1 expression. Increased RhoA activation was associated with Rho kinase-dependent phosphorylation of myosin light chain 2. Functionally, loss of CCM1, -2, or -3 inhibited endothelial cell vessel-like tube formation and extracellular matrix invasion, each of which is rescued by chemical inhibition or short hairpin RNA knockdown of Rho kinase. The findings, for the first time, define a signaling network for CCM1, -2, and -3 in CCM pathology, whereby loss of CCM1, -2, or -3 protein expression results in increased RhoA activity, with the activation of Rho kinase responsible for endothelial cell dysregulation. The results define Rho kinase as a therapeutic target to rescue endothelial cells from loss of CCM protein function.","journal":"UNC Libraries","year":2020,"id":138769,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.951,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":518854,"name":"Amy N. Abell","orcid":"0000-0003-0604-7566","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":512338,"name":"Sompop Bencharit","orcid":"0000-0003-3715-8971","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":2220,"name":"Gary L. Johnson","orcid":"0000-0003-2867-0551","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":601380,"name":"Asya L. Borikova","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":541030,"name":"Christopher M. Welch","orcid":"0000-0002-2900-0229","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":265249,"name":"Noah Sciaky","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":596720,"name":"Christopher F. Dibble","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:17:06.651725Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}