TY - JOUR
T1 - Microvascular endothelial cells migrate upstream and align against the shear stress field created by impinging flow
AU - Ostrowski, Maggie A.
AU - Huang, Ngan F.
AU - Walker, Travis W.
AU - Verwijlen, Tom
AU - Poplawski, Charlotte
AU - Khoo, Amanda S.
AU - Cooke, John P.
AU - Fuller, Gerald G.
AU - Dunn, Alexander R.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the members of the G.G.F., A.R.D., and J.P.C. laboratories for insightful discussions. We thank the Stanford School of Medicine Neuroscience Imaging Core, and specifically Andrew Olson, for helpful discussions. We gratefully acknowledge the support of Kevin P. Killeen and Hongfeng Yin.
Copyright:
Copyright 2014 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2014/1/21
Y1 - 2014/1/21
N2 - At present, little is known about how endothelial cells respond to spatial variations in fluid shear stress such as those that occur locally during embryonic development, at heart valve leaflets, and at sites of aneurysm formation. We built an impinging flow device that exposes endothelial cells to gradients of shear stress. Using this device, we investigated the response of microvascular endothelial cells to shear-stress gradients that ranged from 0 to a peak shear stress of 9-210 dyn/cm2. We observe that at high confluency, these cells migrate against the direction of fluid flow and concentrate in the region of maximum wall shear stress, whereas low-density microvascular endothelial cells that lack cell-cell contacts migrate in the flow direction. In addition, the cells align parallel to the flow at low wall shear stresses but orient perpendicularly to the flow direction above a critical threshold in local wall shear stress. Our observations suggest that endothelial cells are exquisitely sensitive to both magnitude and spatial gradients in wall shear stress. The impinging flow device provides a, to our knowledge, novel means to study endothelial cell migration and polarization in response to gradients in physical forces such as wall shear stress.
AB - At present, little is known about how endothelial cells respond to spatial variations in fluid shear stress such as those that occur locally during embryonic development, at heart valve leaflets, and at sites of aneurysm formation. We built an impinging flow device that exposes endothelial cells to gradients of shear stress. Using this device, we investigated the response of microvascular endothelial cells to shear-stress gradients that ranged from 0 to a peak shear stress of 9-210 dyn/cm2. We observe that at high confluency, these cells migrate against the direction of fluid flow and concentrate in the region of maximum wall shear stress, whereas low-density microvascular endothelial cells that lack cell-cell contacts migrate in the flow direction. In addition, the cells align parallel to the flow at low wall shear stresses but orient perpendicularly to the flow direction above a critical threshold in local wall shear stress. Our observations suggest that endothelial cells are exquisitely sensitive to both magnitude and spatial gradients in wall shear stress. The impinging flow device provides a, to our knowledge, novel means to study endothelial cell migration and polarization in response to gradients in physical forces such as wall shear stress.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84892709057&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84892709057&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.bpj.2013.11.4502
DO - 10.1016/j.bpj.2013.11.4502
M3 - Article
C2 - 24461011
AN - SCOPUS:84892709057
VL - 106
SP - 366
EP - 374
JO - Biophysical Journal
JF - Biophysical Journal
SN - 0006-3495
IS - 2
ER -