Due to their broad differentiation potential, pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) offer a promising approach for generating relevant cellular models for various applications. While human PSC-based cellular models are already advanced, similar systems for non-human primates (NHPs) are still lacking. However, as NHPs are the most appropriate animals for evaluating the safety of many novel pharmaceutica...

The vascular endothelium is critical for induction of appropriate lineage differentiation in organogenesis. In this study, we report that dysfunctional pulmonary endothelium, resulting from the loss of matrix Gla protein (MGP), causes ectopic hepatic differentiation in the pulmonary epithelium. We demonstrate uncontrolled induction of the hepatic growth factor (HGF) caused by dysregulated cross...

Angiogenesis, the formation of new capillaries from preexisting blood vessels, is a multistep, highly orchestrated process involving vessel sprouting, endothelial cell migration, proliferation, tube differentiation, and survival. Eicosanoids, arachidonic acid (AA)-derived metabolites, have potent biologic activities on vascular endothelial cells. Endothelial cells can synthesize various eicosan...

Circulating endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) are incorporated into foci of neovascularization where they undergo differentiation to mature endothelial cells (ECs). We show here that the enzyme sphingosine kinase-1 (SK-1) regulates the rate and direction of EPC differentiation without effect on the hematopoietic compartment. EPCs have high levels of SK-1 activity, which diminishes with differ...

Angiogenesis, the formation of new capillaries from preexisting blood vessels, is a multistep, highly orchestrated process involving vessel sprouting, endothelial cell migration, proliferation, tube differentiation, and survival. Eicosanoids, arachidonic acid (AA)-derived metabolites, have potent biologic activities on vascular endothelial cells. Endothelial cells can synthesize various eicosan...

AIMS Endothelial colony forming cells (ECFCs) participate in post-natal vasculogenesis. We previously reported that vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) promotes human ECFC differentiation through AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activation. However, the mechanisms underlying transcriptional regulation of ECFC differentiation still remain largely elusive. Here, we investigated the role ...

We have defined a signal responsible for the morphological differentiation of human umbilical vein and human dermal microvascular endothelial cells in vitro. We find that human umbilical vein endothelial cells deprived of growth factors undergo morphological differentiation with tube formation after 6-12 wk, and that human dermal microvascular endothelial cells differentiate after 1 wk of growt...

Reendothelialization involves endothelial progenitor cell (EPC) homing, proliferation, and differentiation, which may be influenced by fluid shear stress and local flow pattern. This study aims to elucidate the role of laminar flow on embryonic stem (ES) cell differentiation and the underlying mechanism. We demonstrated that laminar flow enhanced ES cell-derived progenitor cell proliferation an...