THE NAVBO NEWSLETTER

North American Vascular Biology Organization Volume 2, Number 1, May 1995

Vascular Biology: from Atlantic City to the Web ...

Twenty two years ago I was in the US Navy, defending our country from whoever wanted to invade Southern California. Fortunately for me, my mentor, Earl Bendit continued to provide funds so I was able to attend the first meeting of the Vessel Club. This was a really nice time for me. I flew from the smog-laden city of Long Beach California to the decrepit Boardwalk of Atlantic City. About 20 of us were there, including Ted Spaet, a hematologist, who had the idea that the container of blood might be even more interesting than the contents! He and Ramzi Cotran, a pathologist organized this little meeting on the night before the first day of FASEB. Ted was responsible for the structure of the Blood Vessel Club as we still have it. He was President that year and chose not only the talks but brief "blitzes" .... breaking data, shown with no more than 3 slides. The Blood Vessel Club still follows Ted to live up to his standards by presenting provocative new ideas. Going to Atlantic City was a real treat that year. The Navy had given me a choice of early out or a transfer for 12 months to some research billet. This was an easy decision! The best treat, however, was a presentation by Eric Jaffe. Eric was not the first person to grow endothelial cells. Others had had limited success. Eric, however, happened to have the advantage of using an old cell culture methods book. That book reflected the early days of cell culture, an era where the more serum you used the better and growth factors were still an ignored topic being explored by two unknowns, Stanley Cohen and Rita Levi-Montalcini. So Eric made a mistake. He grew his umbilical vein cells, or at least those he got from someone's umbilical cord, in 20% calf serum. It worked. He also identified vWF as a definitive marker for these cells, that worked too! That meeting was the beginning not just of NAVBO but vascular biology itself. For a simple reason. Until that time endothelial cells were essentially inaccessible to biochemists. Most knowledge of the endothelium was based on physiologists indirect metabolic studies where functions were imputed to the innermost surface. One of the more notable achievements of that time was that of Morris Karnovsky who used horseradish peroxidase to identify the small pore and the large pore systems hypothesized from John Pappenheimer's elegant mathematical analysis of capillary exchange. Few people today remember that Pappenheimer capillaries led to the general theories of semi- permeable membranes used today in fields as diverse as desalination and chemical purification. So even prior to 1972 vascular biology was making seminal contributions not only to medicine but even in chemistry. The debate over the structural basis of the pore systems continues till today.

The advent of culture meant that endothelial cell biochemistry could begin. Fortunately, many properties first studied in vitro have proven to be true in vivo as well. Thus the ability to culture endothelial cells has led us to an incredible proliferation of new fields .... from angiogenesis to heterotypic adhesion and vasoregulation.

Smooth muscle biology has, surprisingly, shown less progress even though this cell was also initially cultured at the time of the first blood vessel club by a number of laboratories, including the Campbells and Russell Ross. Perhaps this lack of progress has been because smooth muscle cells were accessible to biochemists even in 1972. We already knew a lot about smooth muscle. Apparently pure preparations could be gotten simply by scraping the media free of endothelium and adventitia. Moreover, in comparison to endothelium, cultured smooth muscle cells have proven to be a disappointing substrate for in vitro studies primarily because of the loss of differentiation first described by Gordon and Julie Campbell in the same year as that first Vessel Club meeting, 1972.

Today, Vascular Biology has become an overwhelming field. I recently was asked by a colleague to recommend a good review article on endothelium. I told him that no one attempted to write such a review anymore but that I had noted the recent publication of a three volume set devoted to one endothelial molecule ... endothelin. My colleague, who was cramming for a grant, was not amused!

Many new fields are emerging within Vascular Biology. Vascular developmental biology is beginning to be quite exciting with the identification of endothelial specific promoters and rapidly increasing understanding of angio- genesis. Smooth muscle cell biology is reaching a new era as molecular biology begins to explain the smooth muscle lineage and unravel the mysteries of the smooth muscle contractile apparatus. Perhaps most exciting, however, is that we are, in the tradition of Pappenheimer, beginning to have an impact on other fields. I am most excited about our clinical impact. As I write this editorial, there are ongoing clinical trials based in angiogenesis as a therapy for infarction or a target for treatment of neoplasia. Adhesion antagonists are being studied as therapeutics in treatment of thrombotic conditions, ischemia, burns, rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory disorders. Growth factors, have begun to be studied in wound healing. Undoubtedly we will see more of this in the future.

As President Elect, I would like to say a few things about what we can try to do to keep the spirit of the Vessel Club alive.

First, there is NAVBO itself. Mike Gimbrone and I argued for quite awhile about whether we needed NAVBO and a big national meeting at all. After all, there are enough small vascular biology meetings these days to keep some of us away from our labs permanently. So why have a NAVBO? We both felt that the growth of vascular biology was leading to segmentation. There was a need for a large annual meeting where vascular biologists from the now diverse disciplines within our field could meet, interact and compete. Hopefully the NAVBO annual meeting will emerge as the most important place for our fellows to present their hot, new work.

Second, our colleagues in Europe had created a very successful European Vascular Biology Association. The leaders of EVBA complained that they did not now who to talk to in the US or Canada about common interests, especially the governance of the biannual international meeting. In 1996 NAVBO will sponsor its first International Vascular Biology Meeting in Seattle.

What else is to be done? I am concerned that we do all we can to keep NAVBO from becoming an ingrown old-boy network.

Inclusiveness

As President Elect I want to ask each member to encourage as broad participation as possible. While we call ourselves the vascular biology organization, many areas of vascular biology are poorly represented at our meetings. This is especially true of hypertension, microcirculation, smooth muscle physiology/pharmacology, and many of the clinical areas. Vascular biology is also growing as a component of many organ system or disease specific disciplines. This is obviously true for the kidney and lung.

A very simple way to help is by encouraging your colleagues to join NAVBO and to attend the International. Posters and brochures for NAVBO and for the IXth IVBM are available from the NAVBO office. We would appreciate your requesting these materials and distributing them.

Finally, those of you who are active in societies with overlapping interests should approach your society about the possibility of joint meetings.

New Forums

The announcement of a NAVBO Internet Forum is very important. In the old days of Atlantic City, we had such a forum ... we called it the Boardwalk. Walking up and down, going from one flea bag hotel to another, avoiding the sidewalk merchants and ladies of the night, one could still be amused by running into a colleague and having a great conversation about the latest data or a hot talk. That kind of informality has become increasingly difficult as the field has grown.

It is my hope that many of us will use the NAVBO Forum as a new Boardwalk.

Fellows

An old lady once disputed Steve Hawking's Universe. She said there was no need for such grand theories to explain what kept the Earth from falling down. Hawking asked her what did hold the Earth up? She replied that the Earth was held up by a turtle. Hawking then asked what held up the turtle? The old lady said:

"Young man, you know perfectly well, the turtle rides on another turtle, and that turtle rides on yet another turtle ... its turtles all the way down!"

Let me suggest, that the future and the past of vascular biology rests on the fellows. Indeed "It is fellows all the way down."

We need to ask ourselves how best to use NAVBO to help our fellows be productive. I hope to see you, senior investigators and fellows, in Seattle in 1996!

Steve Schwartz
President Elect 1995-1996

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