Our group is focused on understanding the role of endothelial and stem cells in heart and skeletal muscle diseases, metabolic regulation as well as in cancer. The major interest is in the endothelial cell secretome and the crosstalk between endothelial and parenchymal cells, and how this is changed in different diseases. The ultimate goal is to identify novel targets in endothelial cells for drug development. These ideas are also applied to study the functional effects of genetic defects in congenital heart diseases. Furthermore, we have identified Prox1 transcription factor as an essential regulator of satellite cell differentiation, and our aim is to further understand its function in skeletal muscle physiology and pathology.