Cross-Platform Analysis of Endothelial Transcriptomic Changes Associated with Diabetes

Endothelial dysfunction is an early hallmark of diabetes and a key driver of diabetic vascular complications. However, the transcriptional responses of endothelial cells (ECs) to diabetic stress across different vascular beds and the extent to which cultured ECs recapitulate these changes remain incompletely understood. Here, we profiled transcriptomes of mesenteric arterial intima from non-diabetic, pre-diabetic, and type 2 diabetic donors and compared diabetes-associated differentially expressed genes with those identified in five cultured human EC subtypes, including umbilical vein, aortic, dermal microvascular, lymphatic microvascular, and liver sinusoidal ECs, exposed to high glucose and TNF-a. Human arterial intima and cultured ECs shared multiple diabetes-associated stress-response and vascular remodeling programs, with metabolic alterations more prominent in human donor ECs and inflammatory and immune pathways more pronounced in cultured ECs. Despite these context-dependent differences, we identified a subset of genes, including GGT5 , HTR1B , SLC25A34-AS1 , and LINC01235 , consistently downregulated in both human donor samples and multiple cultured EC subtypes under diabetic conditions. Functional analyses demonstrated that suppression of these genes impaired angiogenesis while promoting endothelial inflammation and senescence, recapitulating key features of endothelial dysfunction. Together, our findings reveal both shared and context-dependent endothelial responses to diabetes and provide a transcriptomic resource for studying disease-associated EC changes and identifying candidate regulators of diabetes-associated endothelial dysfunction.