February 7, 2019
Home           Membership           Events           Awards           Resources
In This Issue
Join      Rejoin     Renew
Meetings
 
 
Vascular Biology 
Monterey, CA  
October 27-31, 2019

Lymphatic Forum 2019
Austin, TX
May 30 - June 1, 2019

Vasculata 2019
Medical College of Wisconsin
July 13 - 18, 2019

Corporate Partners
Corporate Members




VB2018 Supporters









 
UT Southwestern
Medical Center
VB2018 Exhibitors







Affiliated Journals
Partner Network Advantage - New Job Board Feature
Why post your job on NAVBO's career center rather than going directly to the larger job networks?
Pricing on the mass job boards can vary, but to get a job noticed you typically have to sponsor it for $5 - $10 per day, which can add up quickly especially since you also pay for each click the job gets. When you add it all together, you could be spending up to $45 per day on your job posting. But, when posting a job on NAVBO's career center, you simply pay a flat fee! The Premium package includes our Exclusive Extended Partner Network - which means the jobs are broadcast to sites like ZipRecruiter and Jobs2Careers and more for a flat fee.
 
With special member pricing, you can post a job for as low as $300 with this Partner Network. You never pay for each click, just the flat fee on the NAVBO career center. In addition, the Premium package includes a 60-day job posting making it a great value. The Premium packages also offer features like having your company's logo featured on the career center homepage, having your job appear first in search results, and more.
 
Post your open position now at www.navbo.org/jobs! 
Shop at Amazon?   
Help Support NAVBO 
NAVBO Privacy Policy
Your data privacy and security are important to NAVBO. To that end, we have updated our privacy policy to reflect recent privacy and security regulation implementations and changes. Please review our policy as time permits so you have a complete understanding of the data we have, why we have it, and how we use it.
 
Part of the updates relate directly to the European Union's new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that went into place May 25.   The GDPR seeks to improve the transparency of data usage and give end users more control over their own data. We believe these changes are important and will be compliant with the GDPR regulations.
 
Contact NAVBO if you have any questions or to change your communication preferences.
 
 Please note, you can unsubscribe to this newsletter at anytime by clicking on the SafeUnsubscribe in the footer.
Lymphatic Forum 2019
Registration is Now Open!
Register for this exciting new meeting!
Submit your abstract to the Lymphatic Forum 2019

The abstract submission deadline is March 15, 2019
Christiana Ruhrberg's Judah Folkman Lecture
Christiana Ruhrberg Delivers 2018 Folkman Award Lecture at VB2018
 
Dr. Christiana Ruhrberg, recipient of NAVBO's
2018 Judah Folkman Award , presented the annual Folkman Lecture at Vascular Biology 2018 in Newport, Rhode Island, on October 17.
 
Dr. Ruhrberg's remarks, introduced by Jan Kitajewski of the University of Illinois-Chicago and titled "Molecular and cellular mechanisms of blood vessel growth," covered the highlights of her scientific journey, from pioneering post-doctoral studies of motor neuron development and vascular growth in developing hindbrain to her current research, as Professor in the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London, on recruitment of erythro-myeloid progenitors into vascular endothelium.
 
Dr. Ruhrberg recounted her early studies, performed in collaboration with Holger Gerhardt and Christer Betsholtz, that provided landmark evidence that VEGF A isoforms, with differential solubility and tissue distribution characteristics, form concentration gradients crucial for guiding blood vessel growth in developing organs. Her work demonstrated that endothelial Neuropilin 1, acting as a receptor for VEGF A, has a major role in the vascularization of the retina, in part by regulating vessel sprouting. This work has led more recently to the report that reconnection of severed peripheral nerves  can occur across a "bridge" of neovessels, formed in response to VEGF A released by macrophages in response to local hypoxia.
 
She concluded her talk with an account of the research, published in Nature last year, that used a lineage-tracing approach in mice to follow the fate of CSF1r-positive cells, thus targeting early erythro-myeloid progenitors, microgliaand other differentiated myeloid cells. This work revealed a sub-population of myeloid lineage cells with the potential to contribute to cells to the endothelium of multiple embryonic organs, where they may persist in the adult. Identification of embryonic myeloid endothelial precursors, Dr. Ruhrberg suggested, raises the prospect for cell-based therapies to promote vascular expansion in a variety of ischemic diseases.
 
Be sure to check previous and upcoming issues of the NewsBEAT for synopses of award lectures delivered by Benditt Award winner Rakesh Jain and Springer Award winner Yi Fan.
Today's Webinar - Stefania Nicoli
microRNA-dependent regulation of biomechanical genes establishes tissue stiffness homeostasis
Join  us today - February 7 - at 1:00pm EST for a webinar with Stefania Nicoli of Yale University.  Dr. Nicoli's presentation will discuss the role of of micro-RNAs in regulatory pathways in homeostatic tissue stiffness and tension over time after changes in mechanical stress.

For more details and to register go to: http://www.navbo.org/events/webinars/772-web022019
 
 NAVBO Webinars are free for current NAVBO Members.

Don't Miss These Upcoming Webinars:
March 14 - Stryder Meadows, Tulane University
April 11 - William Sessa, Yale University
May 2 - Joyce Bischoff, Boston Children's Hospital
June 13 - Daniel Greif, Yale University
July 11 - Kishore Wary, University of Illinois at Chicago

And don't forget you can watch archived webinars as well - go to
NAVBO on YouTube!
NEW - NAVBO YouTube Channel
Thanks to the members of our Education Committee, we now have a YouTube Channel with playlists on Vasculogenesis/Angiogenesis, VEGF/VEGFR2, Stroke, Aneurysm/Atherosclerosis, Tumor Angiogenesis, and Anatomy and Physiology. These playlists include videos that were pre-existing on YouTube but were selected for their educational benefits. Michael Dellinger, UT Southwestern and Luis Hortells, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, selected these videos after extensive searches.  Members of the Education Committee reviewed them for accuracy.
 
The purpose of our YouTube Channel is to highlight some quality videos, which give background in some basic areas of vascular biology. Faculty members can direct their undergraduates or graduate students to the channel. Postdocs may be able to view information on areas they are not currently or directly working in but want or need to know more about.
 
If you have found vascular biology videos that have been beneficial to you, please send us the link. We may be able to add it to one of our existing playlists or create a new one.
 
(Please note, when searching YouTube for NAVBO, be sure to include vascular biology - someone beat us to the NAVBO handle - no affiliation, not related to vascular biology) 
Celebrating 25 Years!  We want to hear from you!
Then and Now!
Where were you in 1994?  Had you even thought about the world of vascular biology yet?  Let us see the transformation! We want to share images from 1994 and compare them to those from 2019.
Members - share personal photos.  Maybe you were a kid in a science fair in 1994 and now you're running your own lab!  Or a graduate student and now you're the head of a department.
Technology - if you have images from your 1994 studies, show us how technology has improved to allow you to see vessels, tissue and cells with a whole new perspective. 
Scope - what were  you working on in 1994?  How has your studies and focus evolved?  Share some of your discoveries that were a turning point for you and possibly for the field of vascular biology.  These stories can be shared in a podcast or short video.

Send your images and/or stories to 25years@navbo.org
Videos welcomed and encouraged!
We'll create a slide show for the web site and for the
2019 meeting in Monterey!

Getting to Know More NAVBO Members
Meet Keith Strand
NAVBO Travel Award recipient, Keith Strand, is a graduate student at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.  He presented his work, High-throughput screening (HTS)-based identification of novel, small molecule inducers of PTEN upregulation in smooth muscle cells, in the poster session on vascular smooth muscle cells at Vascular Biology 2018.   

Keith recently spoke with Membership Committee Member, Randa Breikaa of Nationwide Children's Hospital.
 
How did you first learn about NAVBO?    
I first learned about NAVBO in 2016 when I attended the 19th International Vascular Biology Meeting in Boston, MA. My previous research had been in neuroscience, so IVBM 2016 was a great opportunity to get exposure to the broader field of vascular biology outside of the research being done on campus at UC-Anschutz.

Tell us about the research you presented and your mentor?   
My mentor is Dr. Mary Weiser-Evans, and I joined her lab as a graduate student in July 2016. Research in the Weiser-Evans lab focuses on understanding how SMCs contribute to pathological vascular remodeling in the context of diseases such as atherosclerosis and hypertension. Dr. Weiser-Evans has shown that PTEN plays an important role in maintaining SMC homeostasis and through both phosphatase dependent and independent effects. Additionally, the Weiser-Evans lab found that SMC-specific loss of PTEN exacerbates vascular remodeling in pre-clinical animal models and that reduced PTEN expression is associated with increased atherosclerotic lesion severity in human coronary vessels. However, our research also indicates that systemic PTEN upregulation reduces pathological vascular remodeling. These data suggest that PTEN upregulation could serve as a novel therapeutic approach to treat vascular disease. 

The research that I presented at the Vascular Biology 2018 meeting was related to a high-throughput compound screen that we undertook using a PTEN promoter-reporter system to identify novel compounds that cause PTEN upregulation in SMCs. Our aim was to identify compounds that cause increased PTEN expression with the goal of developing them as novel therapeutic agents to treat vascular disease. In our screen, we tested roughly 3,400 compounds and narrowed our results down to identify 5 compounds that upregulate PTEN expression in SMCs. We are currently testing these compounds for efficacy in preventing remodeling using pre-clinical mouse models of vascular disease.

What was your favorite event at the meeting? 
My favorite events were the poster sessions. I enjoyed being able to present my findings, get feedback from the other meeting attendees and see the wide variety of research that other people were presenting in their posters. 
 
Did you meet any people at the meeting who influence your research?  
While I didn't meet any particular individual that directly influences my research at this meeting, I was able to take some of the ideas that were presented in talks or posters back to my lab and I think they might be valuable to inform our future research.
  
The talks that I enjoyed the most were Peter Libby - The academic perspective: From bench discovery to clinical trials; Rakesh Jain - Reengineering the tumor microenvironment to improve cancer treatment: Bench to bedside; and Kenneth Walsh - Clonal hematopoiesis: Altered communication between the bone marrow and the vasculature.  
 
What benefits did the travel award have for you?  
The travel award covered the cost of my airfare and ground transportation to the conference, so it really helped get me to the meeting and gave me a chance to present my research there. It took a huge chunk out of the total cost for attending the meeting, which made it much more feasible for me to come from Denver.
 
What benefits can a trainee expect from attending NAVBO?   
I have attended two meetings organized by NAVBO, IVBM 2016 and Vascular Biology 2018. As a trainee, I appreciated the wide range of topics presented at both meetings. I thought the meetings were very valuable to help me keep up to date with current research in the field, and gain exposure to new ideas because of the amount of recently published, or unpublished data presented at both conferences.
    
What future goals do you have for your work?   My short term goal is to finish up the research that I presented at the conference and identify potentially clinically relevant compounds to treat vascular disease in people. After graduation, I want to continue research in the field of vascular biology as a post-doc and see where that takes me.
 
How can NAVBO help you achieve these goals?  
At a smaller level, the opportunity to earn travel awards offered by NAVBO goes a long way to help me attend these national/international meetings. In a broader sense, NAVBO provides great opportunities for networking with other PIs and presenting my research at conferences, which will hopefully help me with the next steps after graduation.
Meet Amber Stratman
 
Amber recently accepted an Assistant Professor position at Washington University in St. Louis.  Amber presented her work entitled, "Regulation of endocytic trafficking and VEGFR2 receptor availability by a component of the microtubule motor dynein," in the  Signals that Control Angiogenesis and Vascular Remodeling Session at Vascular Biology 2018.  Amber was not able to attend the award ceremony.
 
Amber recently spoke with Membership Committee member, Mabruka Alfaidi of LSU Health Science Center.

How did you first learn about NAVBO? 
I first learned about NAVBO as a graduate student when I was in George Davis's Lab at the University of Missouri. He encouraged me to attend to Vascular Biology meetings, and that's why I applied to the NAVBO Developmental Vascular Biology Meeting in 2008. I have attended regularly ever since. 

Tell us about the research you presented and your mentor.  
At the last NAVBO meeting, I presented a new project I have been working on which involves a zebrafish mutant identified in a forward genetic mutagenesis screen. The zebrafish mutant is genetically deficient in a dynein light intermediate chain, DYNC1LI1, leading to exacerbated blood vessel formation. We are currently investigating the underlying molecular mechanism behind this phenotype, in order to define this gene's role during vascular development and understand if there are any clinical implications. This work has been done under the mentorship of Dr. Brant Weinstein at NICHD, NIH.  He's one of the pioneers of using zebrafish to study vascular biology, and I've learned a tremendous amount about zebrafish vascular imaging, mutagenesis screening, and developmental biology under his mentorship. 
 
What was your favorite event at the meeting?  
I really enjoyed the poster sessions.  You get the chance to talk with people one on one and really dive in to how they are thinking about their research. For me, this sometimes stimulates new lines of thinking and can highlight alternative approaches to challenging experimental problems I am struggling with.

Did you meet any people at the meeting who influence your research? 
I feel by going to NAVBO, I always meet the people who are influencing my research. It's organized in an intimate setting, therefore, you cannot help but meet the PIs in the field who are important to your work. One person who I got to speak and interact with during the lunch and learn session was Dr. Christer Betsholtz. During this session, the group got to learn more about his recent extensive single cell RNA-seq work.
 
What benefits did the travel award have for you?  
It raises the possibility for me to attend other new meetings that I have not got the chance to attend in previous years.

What benefits can a trainee expect from attending NAVBO? 
The biggest thing a trainee can benefit from by attending NAVBO, besides the cutting edge science and the opportunity to present their work, is the chance to network and meet other people who are doing a similar work in the field. Put a face with a name.  Because, its such an interactive meeting, you really have the chance to get to know people.

What future goals do you have for your work? 
I recently accepted an assistant professor position at Washington University in St Louis.  My biggest future goal at the moment is to get transitioned to my new position, and start doing science driven by both my previous research background as well as new directions I hope to develop. 

How can NAVBO help you achieve these goals?  
NAVBO has been integral for me in achieving my goals. It has always been such a tremendously supportive Society. By coming to the meetings, I have been able to meet and connect with people from a broad, international background in the field. The meetings have given me a platform to share my science, put out new ideas, and receive critical feedback to refine my work moving forward.

Spotlight on Trainees
The Story Collider: collecting and sharing stories about science
The Story Collider, a nonprofit organization that has strived for nearly a decade to gather and share stories of personal encounters with science and share them via podcasts and live shows worldwide.  With homes in fourteen cities across the US and internationally, The Story Collider works with scientific societies and academic institutions to produce dozens of live events featuring hundreds of stories. The Story Collider believes that "...everyone has a story about how science has impacted them -- whether they're physicists or comedians, neuroscientists or writers, geologists or cops, doctors or bartenders -- and that those stories, whether heartbreaking or hilarious, have the power to transform the way we think about science and whom it belongs to."  Check out their podcasts to find the stories from fellow trainees, or find a live show near you!
Member News
Shahram Eisa-Beygi, Medical College of Wisconsin, was honored to have an image from his paper, "Characterization of Endothelial Cilia Distribution During Cerebral-Vascular Development in Zebrafish (Danio rerio)" selected for the cover of the December 2018 Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology (ATVB).   
 


If you have news to share with your colleagues, send it to membership@navbo.org.
 Recent Publications by NAVBO Members

Bola3 Deficiency Controls Endothelial Metabolism and Glycine Homeostasis in Pulmonary Hypertension
Circulation
Background and Hypothesis: Deficiencies of iron-sulfur (Fe-S) clusters, metal complexes that control redox state and mitochondrial metabolism, have been linked to pulmonary hypertension (PH), a deadly vascular disease with poorly defined molecular origins.  Read more

 

Modification of Cardiac Progenitor Cell-Derived Exosomes by miR-322 Provides Protection against Myocardial Infarction through Nox2-Dependent Angiogenesis
Antioxidants
Myocardial infarction (MI) is the primary cause of cardiovascular mortality, and therapeutic strategies to prevent or mitigate the consequences of MI are a high priority.  Read more

 

A dynamic and integrated epigenetic program at distal regions orchestrates transcriptional responses to VEGFA
Genome Research
Cell behaviors are dictated by epigenetic and transcriptional programs. Little is known about how extracellular stimuli modulate these programs to reshape gene expression and control cell behavioral responses.  Read more

 

DNMT and HDAC inhibitors together abrogate endotoxemia mediated macrophage death by STAT3-JMJD3 signaling
The International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology
Acute lung injury (ALI) is a common complication of sepsis that often leads to fatal lung disease without effective therapies. It is known that bone marrow derived macrophages are important in resolving the inflammation and maintaining tissue homeostasis.  Read more

 

Visualization and Quantification of Mitochondrial Structure in the Endothelium of Intact Arteries
Cardiovascular Research
Aims: To quantify the mitochondrial structure of ECs in intact arteries vs. cultured cells. Methods and Results: Cre-stop mito-Dendra2 mice, expressing the fluorescent protein Dendra2 in the mitochondrial matrix only, were used to label EC mitochondria using Cre-recombinase under the control of the VE-cadherin promoter.  Read more

 

Glycolytic Switch Is Required for Transdifferentiation to Endothelial Lineage
Circulation
Background: We have previously shown that activation of cell-autonomous innate immune signaling facilitates the transdifferentiation of fibroblasts into induced endothelial cells, and is required to generate induced endothelial cells with high fidelity for endothelial lineage.  Read more

 

AIBP-mediated cholesterol efflux instructs hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell fate
Science
Hypercholesterolemia, the driving force of atherosclerosis, accelerates the expansion and mobilization of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs). The molecular determinants connecting hypercholesterolemia with hematopoiesis are unclear.  Read more

Industry News
NHLBI Request for Information to explore role of sex/gender in vascular disorders
To identify pressing questions related to mechanisms that increase women's risk or resilience for certain heart, lung, blood, and sleep diseases, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has issued a Request for Information, titled "Understanding the Health of Women and the Role of Sex/Gender in Mechanisms of Heart, Lung, Blood, and Sleep Diseases and Disorders."  The RFI offers the research community, health care professionals, patient advocates, and others an opportunity to provide input on topics ranging from scientific gap areas in mechanisms of HLBS diseases, to training and resource needs, among other topics.  Responses may be submitted via email to WHWGRFI@nhlbi.nih.gov by March 15, 2019; for proper routing, be sure to include the Notice number (NOT-HL-18-660) in the subject line.

Surprising protection from cognitive impairment associated with antihypertensive therapies
Recent findings of the Sprint clinical trial, published in JAMA and reported in the NYTimes, revealed that patients who received intensive treatment for hypertension were less likely to develop minor cognitive and memory impairments than those receiving standard treatment.  Such cognitive lapses are viewed as frequents precursor to development of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. The cardiovascular events arm of the trial was stopped in 2015, based on early recognition of significant benefits derived from reducing systolic pressure to below 120 mmHg, compared to the standard target of <140 mmHg.  The cognitive arm of the study, called Sprint Mind, continued to follow the participants for three more years.

Fearless predictions of advances in science and medicine for 2019
With the new year upon us and the glories of 2018 receding in the rearview mirror, our thoughts turn to what lies ahead.  The staff of STAT has compiled, based on their surveys of opinion leaders in business, policymaking, and academe, a list of possible hot areas in science, medicine, and tech for the months ahead.  Entries include prospects for a universal influenza vaccine, improved control over our personal health information, and better understanding of antibiotic resistance.  Check back in December to grade the clairvoyance of the experts.   
Job Postings
Calendar of Events
April 3 - 6, 2019
Blood Brain Barrier
April 11 - 13, 2019
11th Congress of the Vascular Access Society
May 30 - June 1, 2019
Lymphatic Forum 2019
July 6 - 10, 2019
International Society on Thrombosis and Hemostasis Congress 2019
August 4 - 9, 2019
2019 Angiogenesis Gordon Conference
Sept. 16 - 18, 2019
Critical Issue in Tumor Microenvironment: Angiogenesis, Metastasis, and Immunology
Oct. 27 - 31, 2019
Vascular Biology 2019
Sept. 9 - 12, 2020
IVBM 2020
North American Vascular Biology Organization | bernadette@navbo.org | http://www.navbo.org
18501 Kingshill Road
Germantown, MD 20874-2211