Characteristic disease defects in circulating endothelial cells isolated from patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 19; no. 10; p. e0312535
• Main Authors: Aulak, Kulwant S, Mavarakis, Lori, Tian, Liping, Paul, Deborah, Comhair, Suzy A, Dweik, Raed A, Tonelli, Adriano R
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 28-10-2024; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Abnormalities; Activin; Adult; Animal models; Autopsies; Autopsy; Biology and Life Sciences; Care and treatment; Cell culture; Cell death; Cells, Cultured; Cloning; Congestive heart failure; Decisions; Diagnosis; Disease; DNA polymerase; Endothelial cells; Endothelial Cells - metabolism; Endothelial Cells - pathology; Endothelins; Endothelium; Female; Gene expression; Genomes; Health aspects; Heart diseases; Humans; Hypertension; Hypertension, Pulmonary - pathology; Lung diseases; Lung transplantation; Lungs; Male; Medical prognosis; Medicine and Health Sciences; Middle Aged; Nitric oxide; Pathogenesis; Patients; Prostacyclin; Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension - metabolism; Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension - pathology; Pulmonary arteries; Pulmonary hypertension; Quality control; Transcriptome; Transcriptomics; Veins & arteries; United States; United States > US
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0312535

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a progressive disease characterized by elevated pulmonary arterial pressures that can lead to right heart failure and death. No cure exists for this disease, but therapeutic advancements have extended its median survival from 2 to 7 years. Mechanistic research in PAH has been limited by factors including that a) animal models do not fully recapitulate the disease or provide insights into its pathogenesis, and b) cellular material from PAH patients is primarily obtained from donor lungs during autopsy or transplantation, which reflect end-stage disease. Therefore, there is a need to identify tools that can elucidate the specific mechanisms of human disease in individual patients, a critical step to guide treatment decisions based on specific pathway abnormalities. Here we demonstrate a simple method to isolate and culture circulating endothelial cells (CECs) obtained at the time of right heart catheterization in PAH patients. We tested these CECs using transcriptomics and found that they have typical traits of PAH, including those involving key treatment pathways, i.e. nitric oxide, endothelin, prostacyclin and BMP/activin pathways. CECs show important gene expression changes in other central PAH disease pathways. In summary, we present a new cellular model for the ex-vivo mechanistic evaluation of critical PAH pathways that participate in the pathogenesis of the disease and may help personalized therapeutic decisions.