Down to the Wire and Under Pressure: a historical perspective of the development of small vessel myography

Abstract

Wire and pressure myography are both isolated vessel preparations that developed in the 1970s and '80s to study the microvasculature. These two in vitro methods shaped the possibilities for experimentation on small vessels, including arteries, veins, and lymphatics. In this work, publications and book chapters were used to synthesize a historical record of the emergence and landmark developments of wire and pressure myography. Following the creation of these techniques, vascular physiologists could now obtain either isometric measurements of vessel tension (wire myography) or isobaric measurements of vessel diameter (pressure myography). Further, vascular smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells could be individually assessed using pharmacological agents or following denudation, the process of removing the endothelial cell layer. This work examines the role of wire and pressure myography in furthering our understanding of microvascular physiology, highlights the different values of these two techniques, and acts as a supplement to enrich the current understanding of the standard practice of wire and pressure myography. These techniques left a lasting impact on the field of vascular physiology and, today, benefit researchers across fields, especially when linked to other tools including calcium imaging, electrophysiology, and disease or transgenic animal models. Project supported by NIH Grant R01HL155618. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.