Stroke/Cerebral Vasospasm

John Zhang
jzhang@neurosurgery.umsmed.edu

>I was interested to know what type of hemoglobin did you use in your endothelial cell studies?  do you have reason to believe that aortic endothelial cells will react the same as cerebral ones?  To be the devil's advocate, it is accepted that endothelial cells die after SAH so does it matter how?  On the other hand, I think I know at least one reason that it might be important - obviously from a scientific perspective but also if it is an active process such as apoptosis then there must be some induced change in gene expression.  So it would be very interesting to know what the changes are and what causes them - certainly from the point of view of vasospasm but also atherosclerosis.


Thanks a lot Loch for your comment. I believe we used both human and rat hemoglobin. The question of endothelial origin is allways something we can argue about. Most papers published using cultured endothelial cells were peripheral including our own such as by Toshi Kasuya and Linda Marton in Chicago. Few by Kevin Lee but we had their cells and the responses from both peripheral and cerebral are virtually the same. It would be idea to use cerebral but no commecial resourse. The quality of our selve cultures is not as high as peripheral cells. As for the cell death pattern, I think it is extremelly important. If it is apoptosis, then one of the new avenues for treatment may be apoptosis inhibitors. I agree that gene regulations are as important and we are doing something about it now.