“…In this respect, cell culture systems could represent a useful tool to partially overcome drawbacks of tissue analyses, allowing researchers to study single aspects of the atherosclerotic process in very controlled conditions. In the last years, studies on proteome (the intracellular proteins) and secretome (the proteins released into the cell culture medium) by 2DE and MS of ECs (Bruneel et al, 2003;Chen et al, 2007;Tunica et al, 2009), VSMCs (McGregor et al, 2001Dupont et al, 2005;Lee et al, 2006), and monocytes/macrophages (Dupont et al, 2004;Fach et al, 2004;Slomianny et al, 2006;Zhang et al, 2007;Zhao et al, 2009) have been performed. Moreover, in the attempt to help in elucidating the mechanisms of atherogenesis, several proteomic studies have been carried out on vascular cells cultured in different experimental conditions (table 3).…”