David Grainger

I am a postdoctoral researcher studying the specification and diversification of endothelial cells. My research focuses on how endothelial cells of the blood and lymphatic vascular systems are established during embryonic development. How embryos establish complex but organised networks throughout the entire organism from avascular beginnings. In the Stone Group I am working to understand whether endothelial cells with distinct developmental origins contribute to anatomically and functionally heterogeneous endothelial populations and to what extent this is driven by the molecular profile of the cell of origin versus the varying external signals received in different embryonic regions. We are applying high-throughput single cell genomics and advanced imaging to map cells during development and identify putative molecular regulators of cell fate acquisition. These curiosity-driven projects have led to us identifying a gene crucial for lymphatic development that our initial analysis suggests could cause congenital lymphatic disease in a small human population. Prior to joining the Stone group, Dave completed his undergraduate degree in Medical Science at the University of Birmingham before moving to Oxford to undertake his DPhil at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine with Catherine Porcher. During his DPhil and a short post-doc in the Porcher group, Dave studied the cellular niches interacting with the earliest endothelial progenitors to improve in vitro differentiation protocols of human pluripotent stem cells.