Genetic Endothelial Systems Biology of Sickle Stroke Risk

Genetic differences in endothelial biology could underlie development of phenotypic heterogeneity amongst individuals afflicted with vascular diseases. We obtained BOEC (blood outgrowth endothelial cells) from 20 subjects with sickle cell anemia (age 4-19) shown to be either at-risk (n=11) or not-at-risk (n=9) for ischemic stroke due to, respectively, having or not having occlusive disease at the Circle of Willis (CoW). Gene expression profiling identified no significant single gene differences between the two groups, as expected. However, analysis of Biological Systems Scores, using gene sets that were pre-determined to survey each of nine biological systems, showed that only changes in inflammation signaling are characteristic of the at-risk subjects, as supported by multiple statistical approaches Keywords: disease status analysis We obtained BOEC (blood outgrowth endothelial cells) from 20 subjects with sickle cell anemia (age 4-19) shown to be either at-risk (n=11) or not-at-risk (n=9) for ischemic stroke due to, respectively, having or not having occlusive disease at the Circle of Willis (CoW). To allow power calculations to be done, we performed microarray analysis on BOEC from 27 normal subjects of diverse ages. Gene expression profilings were obtained by using Affymetrix U133A chips