Driving endothelial cell specification in pluripotent stem cells and identifying organ(oid) specific vascularization for regenerative medicine

The vascular endothelium is essential to maintain vascular tone in health but is central to the aberrant function of both large and small blood vessels in vascular disease. Within each organ, the endothelium is highly heterogenous. Studying vascularization principles within organs and organoids are important for understanding organ-specific functions of the vasculature and defining new strategies for regenerative medicine. The proposed aims of this project are first, to develop cell culture and in vivo models to support the maintenance of pluripotent-derived cells as organoids driving endothelial cell maturation. Secondly, to assess the maturation and specification status of vascular endothelial at a transcriptional level using single-cell RNAseq and finally, to probe the transcription factor networks that underpin maturation and specification using advanced informatics, ATAC-seq and CRISPRi/a approach in the earlier established cell/organoid models.