9 Induced pluripotent stem cell-derived endothelial cells from human diabetic donors carry an imprint of the diabetic milieu

Diabetic endotheliopathy is the main cause for impaired angiogenesis and reduced neovascularization that lead to microvascular injury and vascular complications. The pathogenic basis for vascular complications arising from diabetes is complex. Elucidation of key underlying mechanisms will help the development of novel therapies and the discovery of potential biomarkers. The ability to generate functional endothelial cells (ECs) from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from small amounts of blood is a novel and powerful tool for cell-based therapies. Human iPSC-derived ECs (iPS-ECs) have a broad range of clinical applications including cell-based therapy, disease modelling and drug screening; they can be used in mechanistic studies towards the development of novel therapies and in the discovery of new biomarkers to be applied in regenerative medicine and treatment of diabetic vasculopathy. Here we utilize transcriptomic and proteomic technologies to assess patient-specific iPS-ECs from diabetic (DiPS-ECs) and non-diabetic (NiPS-ECS) donors 1,2,3,4 in order to investigate the mechanisms driving endotheliopathy in diabetes. Our in vitro and in vivo models recapitulate the effects of hyperglycaemia on the vasculature in the clinical setting. RNA-seq data showed that genes and proteins involved in angiogenesis and EC function were significantly downregulated in DiPS-ECs in comparison to NiPS-ECS (n=3, p Conflict of Interest None