Associate Professor / Graduate Program Director
Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences
Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences
Cardiovascular Disease; Cytoskeleton and cell motility; Molecular and Cellular Biology; Molecular Basis of Disease
My primary research interest is the behavior of endothelial cells, which form the inner lining of blood vessels and are key players in the remodeling events that occur during wound healing, aneurysm formation, tumor growth, and a wide variety of disease conditions. There are two questions about endothelial behavior that drive most of the research in my laboratory:
(1) How do endothelial cells sense and respond to their mechanical environment?
Blood vessels remodel to accommodate long-term changes in blood flow. Certain flow environments can cause destructive remodeling that leads to cerebral aneurysms (local “ballooning” of vessels). Working with researchers at the Canon Stroke & Vascular Research Center, we use cell culture and whole animal systems to examine how endothelial cells respond to specific hemodynamic micro-environments in order to understand the mechanism and regulation of flow-induced remodeling, especially as it relates to cerebral aneurysms.
(2) How does an endothelial cell migrate during wound healing and blood-vessel remodeling? I am particularly interested in the motor protein, myosin II, and how it exerts force within the cytoskeleton to push or pull the cell as it moves. In order to study the organization and movements of cytoskeletal proteins - and not just there biochemical properties - we use a variety of light microscopic methods to examine the dynamics and biochemistry of cytoskeletal proteins in living migrating endothelial cells. We also use conventional biochemical, genetic, and pharmacological manipulations to investigate the regulatory events that control myosin II behavior in situ.