Browsing by Subject "endothelial cell"

Endothelial dysfunction is a common characteristic of several diseases including diabetes mellitus, coronary heart disease and stroke. Healthy endothelium ensures vascular homeostasis, regulation of blood flow and the exchange of oxygen and nutrients, as well as immune cell filtration to the surrounding tissues. In many cases, endothelial dysfunction results in ischemia in the surrounding tissues impairing cellular regeneration mechanisms, which can lead to tissue necrosis in the worst case. Therapeutic angiogenesis via stem cell transplantation aims to restore tissue blood flow and thus aid in tissue regeneration and restoration of a functioning tissue. Adipose derived stem/stromal cells (ASC) are a stem cell population with a multilineage differentiation ability. They have been shown to differentiate towards adipogenic, osteogenic, chondrogenic, myogenic and neurogenic lineages among others. Their easy obtainability from liposuction material and abundance in the adipose tissue makes them an especially practical and favorable cell option for stem cell research. In angiogenesis research, ASCs are commonly used in a co-culture with an endothelial cell (EC) type such as human umbilical vein endothelial cell. ASCs secrete extracellular vesicles (EV) that are small membrane bound vesicles with a diameter ranging from 40-1000 nm, and which have the ability to alter the behavior of target cells through their cargo. EV cargo consists of microRNAs, messenger-RNAs and proteins, and the EV cargo of ASCs has been shown to have proangiogenic effects. The aim of this work was to review what is currently known about ASC ability to promote angiogenesis through paracrine secretion and differentiation into endothelial cells or pericytes, interactions between ASCs and endothelial cells in the angiogenesis promoting process and the role of ASC extracellular vesicles in promoting angiogenesis. The methods for this work were database research of related articles using scientific databases and search engines, article categorization and reading, and finally manuscript production. It can be concluded from the current literature that a co-culture environment of ASCs and an endothelial cell type supports the formation of tube-like structures in vitro. Additional insulin like growth factor 1 in culture medium enhances the expression of angiogenesis-related growth factors in both cell types via PI3K/AKT signaling pathway. Further, the activation of platelet derived growth factor receptor β supports ASC ability to promote vascular network formation. On the contrary, the presence of ASC secreted activin A results in the inhibition of vascular network formation. ASCs can differentiate into endothelial cells particularly in three-dimensional culture conditions. In addition, fibroblast growth factor 2 and the activation of the AKT-pathway are crucial for endothelial differentiation. In addition, ASCs have the ability to differentiate into pericytes and assume a stabilizing role on the outside of the microvessels. Concerning ASC derived EVs and their cargo, miR-31, miR-125a and miR-126 have proangiogenic effects in vitro and in vivo. Proangiogenic miRNAs in ASC EV cargo are miR-181b-5p and the let7-family, out of which miR-181b-5p upregulates vascular endothelial growth factor and hypoxia-inducible factor 1α and let7-family influences tube formation ability of ECs. In vivo, ASC derived EVs support fat grafting, enhance wound healing both in healthy and diabetic environment, and provide cardioprotection. Therefore, ASC EVs show potential for therapeutic angiogenesis but currently there is a lack of clinical trials in EV research.

Human umbilical vein endothelial cells are responsible for maintaining and forming new vessels from existing ones, in a biological process called sprouting angiogenesis. Sprouting angiogenesis is a crucial mechanism for the resolution of hypoxia and normal development of tissues. It also plays a key role in internal plague hemorrhages, which can lead to embolisms and other cardiovascular complications. Angiogenesis is also crucial for cancer development. Sprouting angiogenesis is initiated by hypoxic tissue excreted vascular endothelial growth factor gradient, which induces normal endothelial cells into either a proliferative stalk cell or a signal sensing tip cell phenotype. Both of these cell types depend on the rapid flow of lipids to their plasma membrane, either to form plasma membrane protrusions in tip cells or as new plasma membrane material in dividing stalk cells. This flow is envisioned to involve both vesicle-mediated and non-vesicular mechanisms. A major non-vesicular route of lipid transfer occurs at membrane contact sites via lipid transport proteins. Furthermore, lipids can be transported to the plasma membrane by the direct fusion of vesicles or endosomes with the plasma membrane This thesis set out to explore the role of two membrane contact site proteins, oxysterol-binding protein- related protein 2 and protrudin, in angiogenesis and lipid transfer. Their role was examined by RNA-sequencing transient knock-down samples of these proteins in HUVECs. The RNA-sequencing data was examined by differential expression, gene ontology overrepresentation and gene set enrichment analyses. Gene expression analysis provided almost 10 000 significantly changed transcripts (adjusted p-values < 0.05), in each silenced cell type. The distribution of differentially expressed genes in oxysterol-binding protein- related protein 2 silenced cells, is skewed toward negative fold changes, whereas the distribution of differentially expressed genes in protrudin silenced samples is normally distributed. The results also show significant changes in gene ontologies related to proliferation, cell cycle, angiogenesis as well as hypoxia in both sample types. Gene set enrichment analysis showed upregulation in angiogenesis related pathways, such as the PI3K-Akt and MAPK pathways, in both samples. Significant downregulation was present in cell cycle related pathways and cholesterol biosynthesis pathway in both ORP2 and protrudin silenced samples.