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©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Biol Chem. Aug 26, 2015; 6(3): 65-70
Published online Aug 26, 2015. doi: 10.4331/wjbc.v6.i3.65
Published online Aug 26, 2015. doi: 10.4331/wjbc.v6.i3.65
Topographic patterns of vascular disease: HOX proteins as determining factors?
Richard P Visconti, Alexander Awgulewitsch, Department of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, United States
Alexander Awgulewitsch, Department of Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, United States
Author contributions: Both authors contributed to this manuscript.
Supported by The National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institute of Health, No. P20GM109040, No.P20GM103444, and No.P30GM103342; by RII grant from the NSF (EPS-0903795), a Beginning Grant in Aid from the American Heart Association (2BGIA 11720004) and a South Carolina EPSCoR grant for Exploratory Academic Research (15-2843).
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Alexander Awgulewitsch, PhD, Department of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology, Medical University of South Carolina, 96 Jonathan Lucas Street, STE 816, Charleston, SC 29425, United States. awgulewa@musc.edu
Telephone: +1-843-7928946
Received: February 5, 2015
Peer-review started: February 7, 2015
First decision: March 20, 2015
Revised: April 23, 2015
Accepted: May 7, 2015
Article in press: May 8, 2015
Published online: August 26, 2015
Peer-review started: February 7, 2015
First decision: March 20, 2015
Revised: April 23, 2015
Accepted: May 7, 2015
Article in press: May 8, 2015
Published online: August 26, 2015
Core Tip
Core tip: Accumulating evidence indicates regionally restricted HOX expression patterns in the adult arterial tree that may reflect a topographic vascular HOX code for specifying positional identities in various cell types of the circulatory system. We propose that this positional information is critical for maintaining local vessel wall homeostasis and that its disruption plays an important role in the development of vascular diseases with distinct topographic preferences. This editorial discusses emerging molecular data in support of this novel concept.