Endothelial cells (ECs) are a heterogeneous and ductile cell type that serves as a critical interface between blood and diverse tissue microenvironments. ECs can adopt brain organotypic properties in response to their interaction a complex ecosystem of cells: adjacent mural smooth muscle cells and pericytes, perivascular immune cells, and surrounding astrocytes that differ across brain regions and vary along an arteriovenous gradient.
Heterogeneity along this gradient produces functionally segmented circulatory, metabolic, and permeability properties. The molecular mechanism by which ECs are endowed with these unique organotypic attributes remains unknown.
Dr. Raphael Lis will be discussing the molecular determinants of vascular organotypicity and how it can allow us to close in on using pluripotent stem cell to generate organotypic brain endothelial cells.