Phenotypic plasticity of human umbilical vein endothelial cells

We read the article of Browning et al 1 about comparative gene expression profiling of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) and ocular vascular endothelial cells with interest. The authors report that primary HUVEC (commercially bought, unpassaged) show enrichment for probe sets involved in embryological development while ocular microvascular endothelial cells (choroidal and retinal) isolated from postmortem human globes 49–52 h after death demonstrated enrichment for probe sets for MHC classes I and II, immune responses and cell signal transduction. Postmortem artefact, including cessation of circulation, needs to be excluded as a possible cause of inflammatory gene …