Wilson, Emily Professor

The goals of my lab are to understand the role of mechanical forces in vascular growth and remodeling processes. Cells within the blood vessel wall are exposed to numerous mechanical forces including fluid shear stress, circumferential wall stress, and axial stress as part of their normal environment and alterations in these parameters plays important roles in the development and progression of vascular pathologies such as atherosclerosis, hypertension and aneurysms. Our experiments are focused on how understanding how vascular smooth muscle cells sense changes in the mechanical environment and how this leads to changes in gene expression and cellular phenotype.