Epicardial VEGFC/D signaling is essential for coronary lymphangiogenesis

The contractile ability of the mammalian heart critically relies on blood coronary circulation, essential to provide oxygen and nutrients to myocardial cells. In addition, the lymphatic vasculature is essential for the myocardial immune response, extracellular fluid homeostasis and response to injury. Recent studies identified different origins of coronary lymphatic endothelial cells, however, the cues that govern coronary lymphangiogenesis remain unknown. Here we show that the coronary lymphatic vasculature develops in intimate contact with the epicardium and with epicardial-derived cells. The epicardium expresses the lymphangiogenic cytokine VEGFC and its conditional deletion in the epicardium abrogates coronary lymphatic vasculature development. Interestingly, VEGFD is also expressed in the epicardium and cooperates with VEGFC in coronary lymphangiogenesis, but it does so only in females, uncovering an unsuspected sex-specific role for this cytokine. These results identify the epicardium/subepicardium as a signaling niche required for coronary lymphangiogenesis and VEGFC/D as essential mediators of this role.