Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

A Novel Mechanism For Mechanosensing By Endothelial Cells, Jennifer Macdowell

Honors College

The formation of new vasculature is an essential process, but can also be utilized by cancerous cells. Angiogenesis requires the directed migration of the endothelial cells lining the nascent blood vessels. This process is largely mediated by integrin, which plays a key role in the interplay between sensing a force in the extracellular matrix (ECM) and transducing this signal, a process termed mechanotransduction. Through cell-ECM focal adhesions, integrin mediates the signaling both into and out of the cell, promoting growth of focal adhesions and subsequent cell spreading and migration. In order to study focal adhesion dynamics related to force, we …