Current Methods for Advancing the Study of Vascular Endothelial Cells

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editors

Tao Jia

West China School of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmacology

Dr. Tao Jia is a tenured associate investigator and team leader (PI) in the Department of Pharmacology at West China School of Pharmacy, Sichuan University. His current research is focused on the molecular pharmacology of vascular and lung-related diseases.Prior to joining Sichuan University, Dr. Jia worked as a mentor for advanced postdoctoral research at the Institut Curie in Paris. His research focused on exploring the interplay between nuclear and mitochondrial genomes. He earned his PhD from the University of Grenoble-Alpes under the guidance of Dr. Jean-Luc Coll, where he worked on developing therapeutic bifunctional molecules targeting tumor angiogenesis. He continued his research as a postdoctoral fellow at INSERM Grenoble, working with Dr. Jean Luc and Dr. Beatrice Eymin, focusing on fibroblast growth factors, their inhibitors, and their impact on endothelial to mesenchymal transition signals and RNA splicing mechanisms in various vascular endothelial cell models.Currently, Dr. Jia is interested in deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in pulmonary microvascular lesions contributing to lung injury and repair, as well as in the development of new strategies for treating respiratory diseases through modulating the pulmonary vascular microenvironment.

Jiang Zhang

Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Jiang Zhang completed her doctoral training at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon under the guidance of Dr. Thierry Walzer, with a primary focus on the transcriptional regulation of innate immune cells, especially natural killer cells (NKs). Currently, Dr. Zhang is a research fellow working under the mentorship of Dr. Thomas Kupper at Harvard University and Brigham and Women's Hospital. Her research focuses on how the neuron system interacts with the immune cells within the skin, with the ultimate goal of leveraging this information to design more effective and novel vaccines by enhancing T-cell functionalities.

Weijing Han

SongShan Lake Materials Laboratory, Biological interface Group

Dr. Weijing Han completed her doctoral training at the Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, under the guidance of Dr. Yude Yu. Her research primarily focused on high-throughput pyrosequencing chips. Later, she joined the Institut Curie as a postdoctoral researcher, where she worked under the mentorship of Dr. Jacques Camonis and Dr. Stephanie Descroix. During this time, her research centered around tumor-on-chip and 3D bioengineered models for investigating the tumor microenvironment ex vivo and conducting preclinical drug studies. Currently, Dr. Han Weijing is an associate researcher in the Biological Interface Group at Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory. Her current research still revolves around organ-on-chip 3D models and microvasculature on a chip.

Lanpeng Chen

Erasmus MC Cancer Institute, Department of Hematology

Dr. Lanpeng Chen is a molecular cell biologist with a multidisciplinary approach encompassing cancer cell biology, immunology, hematology, and computational biology. His PhD journey at Leiden University involved the use of zebrafish as a model to explore interactions between tumor cells and their microenvironment in distant metastasis. After his PhD, he joined Prof. Marc Raaijmaker's lab at the Erasmus MC Cancer Institute as a scientific researcher. He leveraged single-cell technologies to investigate the roles of the bone marrow ecosystem in stem cell maintenance, leukemic evolution, and treatment responses in human hematopoiesis and myeloid malignancy. His interests include, but are not limited to, the roles of endothelial niches in bone regeneration, hematopoiesis regulation, or AML development. In addition, he is specifically interested in using animal models, like zebrafish, to develop novel drugs targeting endothelial cells for cancer treatments.

Collection Overview

Endothelial cells play a pivotal role in vascular biology, regulating blood flow, angiogenesis, and maintaining vascular homeostasis. Moreover, they are recognized as central regulators of inflammatory reactions. Their multifaceted role offers a wealth of opportunities for cutting-edge research and developing novel therapeutic strategies.

Nonetheless, studying endothelial cells in vitro and ex vivo across various pathological contexts, such as respiratory diseases, inflammatory diseases, and cancer, remains challenging. The challenges include the identification and high-purity isolation of organ-specific and tissue-specific endothelial cells in vitro while maintaining their phenotypic characteristics in culture and the scarcity of functional models that can effectively mimic specific pathological scenarios for the study of endothelial cell function both in vitro and in vivo. This shortage refers to the lack of suitable 2.5D and 3D models for simulating microvascular angiogenesis, vascular lumen formation, and remodeling in vivo. Moreover, there are technical and interdisciplinary research barriers associated with 3D endothelial cell cultivation, live cell tracking, and biochip technologies.

This Methods Collection not only welcomes novel materials and methods for the isolation, culture, imaging, gene editing, phenotypic characterization, and pharmaceutical targeting of tissue and organ-specific endothelial cells in in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo settings but also aims to introduce methods that shed light on the communication between organ-specific endothelial cells and other cell types, such as immune cells. The goal is to explore new possibilities for manipulating endothelial cells for therapeutic purposes, including but not limited to tissue regeneration, organ repair, and anti-cancer research.