Endothelial response to inflammation

Endothelial cells are very important in the inflammatory response, controlling various processes including the expression of receptors and chemokines that induce the movement of immune cells from the blood into the tissue.

Existing studies on how endothelial cells respond to inflammatory stimuli tend to lack a temporal aspect, with the focus on response induction, rather than secondary effects or resolution. Furthermore, there have been no descriptions of the influence of sex such dynamic EC responses, even though there are known to be sex differences in response to inflammation.

In this project, we stimulate male or female endothelial cells with an inflammatory cytokine (tumour necrosis factor) and follow the transcriptional response over 72 hours. Using bioinformatics analysis, we identify gene modules that represent early, mid and late response patterns. In addition to increasing our understanding of the endothelial inflammatory response, this data provides us with new candidates for functional studies, and potential plasma biomarkers for inflammation stage in patients.

This is a collaborative project between our group and that of Dr. Marieke Kuijjer, UiO.

This project is supported by a collborative grant to Lynn Butler (UiT) and Marieke Kuijjer (UiO) from the Norwegian Centre for Molecular Medicine (NCMM).