“…In this context, the endothelium undergoes structural and functional alterations which may result in remote organ failure that is central to the pathophysiological derangements of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (5,42). Despite numerous reports describing an increased activity of SMPD1 in several clinical conditions (43,44), there is a lack of information regarding the action of SMPD1 in particular on endothelial cells mediated by a plethora of proinflammatory serum constituents. Therefore, we used a human in vitro setting (HMEC-1) to study various pathophysiological processes as these cells display most of the morphological and functional characteristics of endothelial cellular damage control ( Figure 5D) including autocrine signaling.…”