Cardiac Pericytes Acquire a Fibrogenic Phenotype and Contribute to Vascular Maturation After Myocardial Infarction.

In the healing infarct, cardiac pericytes upregulate expression of fibrosis-associated genes, exhibiting matrix-synthetic and matrix-remodeling profiles. A fraction of infarct pericytes exhibits expression of fibroblast identity markers. Pericyte-specific TGF-β signaling plays a central role in maturation of the infarct vasculature by protecting from adverse dilative remodeling, but it does not modulate fibrotic remodeling.