# Basement Membrane Homeostasis and Repair

> **NIH NIH R01** · VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $327,060

## Abstract

Project Summary
 Basement membranes are ubiquitous and conserved sheets of extracellular matrix that
separate tissue types and compartments. The thickness and stiffness of basement membranes
varies in different tissues, even though they all share a common set of core components, and the
origin and maintenance of these differences is not understood. Despite extensive biochemical
knowledge of their in vitro assembly, they are often considered to be static after they have
formed, and so very little is known about how basement membranes are maintained in health or
how they are repaired after damage. Recent data from my laboratory indicates that assembled
basement membranes in adult tissues are surprisingly dynamic, requiring continuing crosslinking
and proteolysis for their proper function even in the absence of external damage.
 This proposal will investigate mechanisms of basement membrane homeostasis and
repair. First, we will measure their assembly and disassembly rates in undamaged tissue, and
then determine how crosslinking and proteolysis affect those rates. Second, we will determine
how homeostasis is similar to and different from the process of repair, investigating turnover
rates and sources of basement membrane components; and we will screen to identify new genes
important to basement-membrane maintenance and repair. Finally, we will test an exciting and
novel model that may explain how some basement membranes have different properties than
others, a model centered on the activity of the collagen chaperone SPARC. All these aims will
utilize Drosophila melanogaster, which has a compact genome and excellent genetic tools. The
discoveries emerging from this study will be important to cell biology generally, to tissue repair
specifically, and they will have clinical relevance to diseases of basement membrane and to
tumor metastasis, as basement membranes are important obstacles to cancer cell migration, and
understanding their dynamics will shape models of tumor metastasis.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9997312
- **Project number:** 1R01GM137595-01
- **Recipient organization:** VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Andrea Page-McCaw
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $327,060
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-04-15 → 2024-02-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9997312

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9997312, Basement Membrane Homeostasis and Repair (1R01GM137595-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9997312. Licensed CC0.

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