**Contents**



#### **About the Special Issue Editors**

**Elisabeth Deindl** (Dr.) graduated at the ZMBH in Heidelberg, Germany, where she worked on hepatitis B viruses. Thereafter, she joined the lab of Wolfgang Schaper at the Max-Planck-Institute in Bad Nauheim, where she started to decipher the molecular mechanisms of arteriogenesis. After a short detour on stem cells, she again focused on arteriogenesis, becoming a leading expert in the field. By using a peripheral model of arteriogenesis, she demonstrated that collateral artery growth is a matter of innate immunity, and presented a blueprint of sterile inflammation, which is locally triggered by extracellular RNA.

**Paul H. A. Quax** (Ph.D.) completed his Ph.D. at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, on the role of plasminogen activators in tissue remodeling. He continued working on this topic in relation to vascular remodeling, first at the Gaubius Laboratory TNO, and later at the Leiden University Medical Center, as a professor in experimental vascular medicine. His interest in arteriogenesis was driven by the lack of therapeutic options for patients with peripheral arterial disease. Therapeutic arteriogenesis and angiogenesis induced by gene therapy, growth factors, modulation of inflammatory and immune response, but also by the modulation of microRNAs and other noncoding RNAs in small animal models, are topics of his research.

**Thomas Schmitz-Rixen** (MD, Ph.D.) completed his Ph.D. at the University of Cologne, Germany, on the role of immunosuppression after vascular allotransplantation. As a professor of vascular surgery in Frankfurt/M, he joined the lab of Wolfgang Schaper at the Max-Planck-Institute in Bad Nauheim, to look into the molecular mechanism of arteriogenesis. He developed an animal model of fast and intense collateralization in the lower extremities and the brain. His recent topics of research in therapeutic arteriogenesis, both in humans and animal models, are related to the role of microRNA.
