Abstract
As blood flows, the vascular wall is constantly subjected to physical forces, which regulate important physiological blood vessel responses, as well as being implicated in the development of arterial wall pathologies. Changes in blood flow, thus generating altered hemodynamic forces are responsible for acute vessel tone regulation, the development of blood vessel structure during embryogenesis and early growth, as well as chronic remodeling and generation of adult blood vessels. The complex interaction of biomechanical forces, and more specifically shear stress, derived by the flow of blood and the vascular endothelium raise many yet to be answered questions:(1) How are mechanical forces transduced by endothelial cells into a biological response, and is there a "shear stress receptor"?(2) Are "mechanical receptors" and the final signaling pathways they evoke similar to other stimulus-response transduction systems?(3) How do vascular endothelial cells differ in their response to physiological or pathological shear stresses?(4) Can shear stress receptors or shear stress responsive genes serve as novel targets for the design of diagnostic and therapeutic modalities for cardiovascular pathologies? The current review attempts to bring together recent findings on the in vivo and in vitro responses of the vascular endothelium to shear stress and to address some of the questions raised above.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 177-199 |
Number of pages | 23 |
Journal | Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology |
Volume | 81 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 2003 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported in part by the Israel-United States Binational Scientific Fund (BSF), #1998114 and by the Israeli Ministry of Science (Tashtiot) Fund #1000053.
Funding
This work was supported in part by the Israel-United States Binational Scientific Fund (BSF), #1998114 and by the Israeli Ministry of Science (Tashtiot) Fund #1000053.
Funders | Funder number |
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Israel-United States Binational Scientific Fund | |
Israeli Ministry of Science | 1000053 |
United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation | 1998114 |