Pressure Points: Endothelial Responses to Shear Stress and Pressure in Health and Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

Hemodynamic forces exert a profound influence on endothelial signaling and, when abnormal, contribute centrally to human vascular disease. Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is characterized by both hemodynamic derangement and pulmonary arterial endothelial cell (PAEC) dysfunction. Despite importance in disease initiation and progression, the combined effects of shear and pressure forces on PAEC biology remain incompletely understood, particularly in the context of PAH.

PAECs obtained at explant from controls and patients with idiopathic PAH or congenital heart disease-associated PAH (CHD-PAH) were cultured in a custom resistor-coupled microfluidic platform and exposed to static, low (3 dyne/cm²), or high (20 dyne/cm²) shear stress under either low or elevated (60 mmHg) pressure. After 24 hours, we assessed cellular morphology and performed transcriptomic analysis via bulk RNA sequencing, incorporating analyses of PAH subtype and donor sex.

Morphologically, PAECs (n=18 donors) aligned with flow under high, but not low, shear, and alignment was not significantly altered by disease state or pressure. As expected, shear stress fundamentally reorganized the PAEC transcriptome. The "dose-response" to increasing shear differed across biological pathways in six statistically significant patterns. Increasing shear led to divergence in transcription between control and PAH cells, particularly in pathways involved in immune activation, stress signaling, and vascular remodeling, with subtype differences also observed. Pressure had modest effects on transcription, with CHD-PAH PAECs notably displaying pressure-induced stress and inflammatory signaling. We identified sexual dimorphism in the endothelial shear response, including that male cells under shear enriched for proliferative and angiogenic pathways and female cells for fatty acid metabolism and stress responses.

We provide a systems-level overview of how shear and pressure shape PAEC transcription, revealing divergent responses across disease state, PAH subtype, and donor sex. These findings highlight the need for further investigation into mechanosensitive pathways in PAH as potential novel therapeutic targets.