Special Symposia

E pluribus unum: The “Vasculome?”

Monday, October 31 from 6:15-8:00pm

Chairs/Organizers: Marc Charette, Zorina Galis and Pothur Srinivas, NHLBI/NIH

The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) is organizing a workshop and discussion forum open to the entire audience of IVBM 2016 to explore the timeliness of creating “The Vasculome,” an integrated, multi-dimensional, multi-scale map of the human vasculature.

Speakers:
Zorina Galis, PhD
Chief, Vascular Biology and Hypertension Branch
Division of Cardiovascular Sciences
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

Renata Pasqualini, PhD
Professor of Internal Medicine
Maralyn S. Budke Endowed Chair in Cancer Experimental Therapeutics
Chief, Division of Molecular Medicine
University of New Mexico Cancer Center

Anthony Paul Barnes
Knight Cardiovascular Institute
Oregon Health & Science University

Mark Majesky
University of Washington School of Medicine

Ravi Iyengar, PhD
Dorothy and Lewis Rosenstiel Professor, Department of Pharmacology & Systems Therapeutics
Director, Systems Biology Center New York (SBCNY)
Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Orit Rozenblatt-Rosen, PhD
Associate Director, Klarman Cell Observatory
Broad Institute

Alex Shalek, PhD
Institute for Medical Engineering and Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Blood and lymphatic vessels are critical for the normal function of all organs in the body. Vascular dysfunction has been implicated in many major systemic and organ-level diseases, yet our understanding of the causal relationships between the local and systemic vascular function, perturbation, and dysfunction remains fragmented. A major challenge is related to the intrinsic heterogeneity of blood and lymphatic vessels, differing in structure, function, and molecular profiles across the body, further combined with individual variations due to genetic, sex-, or age-related differences. In addition, highly specialized investigations continue to occur largely in intellectual and institutional silos. We propose that building the ability to integrate the existing and future pieces of this knowledge puzzle will provide not only a much needed approach for better understanding the vasculature, but also the physiology and pathological modifications of any vascularized tissue/organ, and should help identify novel biomarkers and therapeutic strategies to help close the cardiovascular bench-side to bedside gap.

New investigational and computational tools are currently opening the opportunity for multi-dimensional, multi-scale investigations of the human body, all the way down to the single cell level and all the way up to whole body clinical functional maps. We want to explore if such approaches, including high resolution –omics, functional imaging, etc. might be used to characterize the human vasculature in context, to understand the function and dysfunction of various tissue-vascular units, and whether such knowledge could be used for a personalized approach to detect and treat a variety of diseases associated with vascular dysfunction. While considering the complexity of organizing a multi-dimensional, multi-scale map of the human vasculature, i.e., “The Vasculome,” we became intrigued by the idea of borrowing nature’s design and use the endothelium, which forms a contiguous layer within any blood or lymphatic vessel with clear structural and functional local specializations, as its organizing principle.

Workshop discussions will seek to identify opportunities to address some key enduring challenges in the way of integrating traditional and state-of-the-art knowledge and investigational tools from various areas of vascular biology, including answering specific questions such as:

• What are the challenges remaining in the way of multidimensional investigations (-omics, imaging, physiology) of vascular cells down to the single cell level in their natural microenvironments, including challenges in sampling, in situ technologies, etc.?

• What strategic approaches can be used to integrate biological, technological, and computational advances to produce multiscale, multidimensional vascular maps for the purpose of understanding the complex dynamic short and long range interactions among various vascular cells, and their communications with other cell types within various tissue “vascular units” (e.g., with the brain, heart, kidney, etc.) and at the whole body level?

• Could we perhaps use the endothelium as the organizing principle of the “Vasculome”?

We are looking forward to the vascular community participation and to great discussions during and following this workshop!

Lymphatics: At the Crossroad of the Circulation and Immune System

Supported in part by Texas A&M University College of Medicine, Department of Medical Physiology

Tuesday, November 1 from 5:15-6:15pm

Chair: David Zawieja, Texas A&M University
Stanley Rockson, Stanford University
          Lymphatic Disease, Edema, and Inflammation: From Bench to Bedside
Laura Santambrogio, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
          Lymph nodal circulation and antigens filtration rate

Vascular Regeneration Using HGF Gene Therapy

Tuesday, November 1 from 4:00-5:00pm

Chair: Lars Norgren, MD, PhD, Uppsala University
Ryuichi Morishita, MD, PhD, Osaka University
          Basic research of HGF
Richard Powell, MD, PhD, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
          Clinical research of HGF

Exhibitor Showcase

Monday, October 31 from 4:00-5:00pm

Targeted proteomics performed on the Q Exactive permits to study the metabolism of circulating apolipoproteins
Sasha A. Singh, Director of Proteomics
Center for Interdisciplinary Cardiovascular Sciences
Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

Translational Proteomics Workflows for Extending the Profiling Range of Plasma/Serum
Scott Peterman and David Sarracino
Thermo Fisher Scientific BRIMS, Cambridge, MA