Clinical Focus

• Aortic Disease
• Marfan Syndrome and Aortic Disorders
• Cardiovascular Disease

Professional Education

Current Research Interests

Dr. Spin is pursuing fundamental issues relating to smooth muscle cell (SMC) biology. Smooth muscle cells play crucial roles in vascular development, homeostasis, and disease. Injury causes SMCs to modulate from a quiescent, differentiated state to a synthetic, proliferative phenotype. Details of SMC phenotypic switching in development and disease have remained elusive, and Dr. Spin is applying new genomic tools including microarrays to look at the process of smooth muscle cell development. Having investigated various platforms for extracting genetic information relevant to this process, he is employing a model smooth muscle differentiation system. Using an in situ 60-mer array platform with more than 20,000 mouse genes derived from the National Institute on Aging clone set, he identified 2,739 genes that were significantly upregulated after differentiation was completed (false detection rate < 1). These genes encode numerous markers known to characterize differentiated SMC, as well as many unknown factors. He further characterized the sequential patterns of gene expression during the differentiation time course, particularly for known transcription factor families, providing new insights into the regulation of the differentiation process. Changes in genes associated with specific biological ontology-based pathways were evaluated, and temporal trends were identified for functional pathways. In addition to confirming the utility of the model, the data provide a large-scale perspective of gene regulation during SMC differentiation. Considerable evidence now indicates that complex chromatin remodeling is essential for smooth muscle differentiation, and Dr. Spin’s genomic studies identified many differentially regulated chromatin remodeling genes during SMC differentiation. He hypothesized that chromatin remodeling and histone modification with gene silencing and activation play key roles in the expression of smooth muscle cell (SMC) specific genes, and that phenotypic...

Publications

• Analysis of in situ and ex vivo vascular endothelial growth factor receptor expression during experimental aortic aneurysm progression. Tedesco MM, Terashima M, Blankenberg FG, Levashova Z, Spin JM, Backer MV, Backer JM, Sho M, Sho E, McConnell MV, Dalman RL. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2009; 29 (10): 1452-7
• Transcriptional profiling of reporter genes used for molecular imaging of embryonic stem cell transplantation. Wu JC, Spin JM, Cao F, Lin S, Xie X, Gheysens O, Chen IY, Sheikh AY, Robbins RC, Tsalenko A, Gambhir SS, Quertermous T. Physiol Genomics. 2006; 25 (1): 29-38
• Network analysis of human in-stent restenosis. Ashley EA, Ferrara R, King JY, Vailaya A, Kuchinsky A, He X, Byers B, Gerckens U, Oblin S, Tsalenko A, Soito A, Spin JM, Tabibiazar R, Connolly AJ, Simpson JB, Grube E, Quertermous T. Circulation. 2006; 114 (24): 2644-54
• Molecular signatures determining coronary artery and saphenous vein smooth muscle cell phenotypes: distinct responses to stimuli. Deng DX, Spin JM, Tsalenko A, Vailaya A, Ben-Dor A, Yakhini Z, Tsao P, Bruhn L, Quertermous T. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2006; 26 (5): 1058-65
• Signature patterns of gene expression in mouse atherosclerosis and their correlation to human coronary disease. Tabibiazar R, Wagner RA, Ashley EA, King JY, Ferrara R, Spin JM, Sanan DA, Narasimhan B, Tibshirani R, Tsao PS, Efron B, Quertermous T. Physiol Genomics. 2005; 22 (2): 213-26