Northwestern Events Calendar

Mar
12
2018

"Mechanisms of Endothelial Regeneration and Vascular Repair: In Vivo Genome Editing"

When: Monday, March 12, 2018
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM CT

Where: Ward Building, Room 5-230, 303 E. Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611 map it

Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Public - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students

Contact: Alexa Nash   (312) 503-4893

Group: Department of Pharmacology Seminars

Category: Lectures & Meetings

Description:

The Department of Pharmacology is pleased to welcome Youyang Zhao, PhD. to give the Pharmacology Seminar on March 12th.

Dr. Zhao recently joined the Northwestern faculty as the William G. Swartchild, Jr. Distinguished Research Professor and Director of the Program for Lung and Vascular Biology at the Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

Recovery of endothelial barrier integrity after vascular injury is vital for vascular homeostasis and resolution of inflammation. Endothelial dysfunction plays a critical role in the initiation and progression of vascular diseases such as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and atherosclerosis. Employing genetic lineage tracing approach, we have defined the origin of cells responsible for endothelial regeneration following sepsis-induced inflammatory vascular injury. We delineated the critical role of the transcription factor FoxM1 in mediating endothelial regeneration and vascular repair, and defined the role of GPCR signaling in activating FoxM1-dependent endothelial regeneration using in vivo genome editing and conditional knockout mice. Furthermore, we found that defective FoxM1-dependent endothelial regeneration is responsible for impaired vascular repair and persistent inflammatory injury in aged mice, and developed novel approaches to reactivate aging-impaired endothelial regeneration. We have also validated the clinical relevance of this regenerative pathway and identified novel SNPs associated with disease progression in ARDS patients. Together, these studies will identify druggable targets leading to novel therapeutic strategies to activate the intrinsic endothelial regeneration program to restore endothelial barrier integrity and promote vascular repair in vascular diseases (sepsis, ARDS, ischemic cardiovascular diseases, and atherosclerosis) in patients, especially the aged population.
Additionally, I will also discuss how the vascular niche regulates macrophage functional polarization in resolving inflammatory lung injury.

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