Bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) can differentiate into vascular endothelial cells (VECs). It is regarded as an important solution to cure many diseases, such as ischemic diseases and diabetes. However, the mechanisms underlying BMSC differentiation into VECs are not well understood. Recent reports showed that CD163 expression was associated with angiogenesis. In this study, overexpression of ...

Monocytes fundamentally contribute to immune surveillance and the inflammatory response in immunoinflammatory diseases like atherosclerosis. Recruitment of these cells to the site of injury requires their trafficking across the blood vessel wall. A series of events, including capture, rolling, slow rolling, arrest, adhesion strengthening, and lateral locomotion, precede monocyte transmigration....

Obtaining highly purified differentiated cells via directed differentiation from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) is an essential step for their clinical application. Among the various conditions that should be optimized, the precise role and contribution of the extracellular matrix (ECM) during differentiation are relatively unclear. Here, using a short fragment of laminin 411 (LM411-E8), ...

Lung stem cells are instructed to produce lineage-specific progeny through unknown factors in their microenvironment. We used clonal 3D cocultures of endothelial cells and distal lung stem cells, bronchioalveolar stem cells (BASCs), to probe the instructive mechanisms. Single BASCs had bronchiolar and alveolar differentiation potential in lung endothelial cell cocultures. Gain- and loss-of-func...

Background: Hypertension (HT) promotes structural and functional changes in the cerebral microcirculation that can provoke irreversible cerebrovascular injury, leading to neuronal loss brain atrophy,1 cognitive impairment, vascular dementia,2 Alzheimer’s disease.3 Currently, mechanisms consequences of such remodeling are not fully understood. Transforming growth factor (TGF) is a morphogen reg...

OBJECTIVE The aim of our study is to determine the cellular and molecular origin for the pericytes in infantile hemangioma (IH) and their functional role in the formation of pathological blood vessels. METHODS AND RESULTS Here we show that IH-derived stem cells (HemSCs) form pericyte-like cells. With in vitro studies, we demonstrate that HemSC-to-pericyte differentiation depends on direct con...

Endothelial cells and mural cells (smooth muscle cells, pericytes, or fibroblasts) are known to communicate with one another. Their interactions not only serve to support fully functional blood vessels but also can regulate vessel assembly and differentiation or maturation. In an effort to better understand the molecular components of this heterotypic interaction, we used a 3D model of angiogen...

Circulating endothelial progenitor cells have been shown to instigate new vessel formation via angiogenesis and neovascularisation and to induce ongoing vascular and tissue repair by domiciliation to sites of vascular or tissue damage. However, the mechanisms that recruit circulating endothelial progenitor cells towards vascular lesions and regulate repair mechanisms of ischemic peripheral orga...

Radiation induced pulmonary fibrosis (RIPF) is one of the major side effects of radiotherapy for lung cancer. Previous studies have shown that endothelial cells and activated myofibroblasts play a key role in RIPF. However, the interaction between irradiated endothelial cells and activation of myofibroblasts has not been reported. The aim of the present study was to examine whether irradiated e...

Embryonic stem (ES) cells, which are derived from developing mouse blastocysts, have the ability to differentiate into various cell types in vitro. When placed in basal medium with added serum, mouse ES cells undergo a programmed differentiation favoring formation of cell types that are found in the embryonic yolk sac, including vascular endothelial cells. These in vitro differentiated endothel...