Although venous thromboembolism (VTE) often occurs in the presence of provoking factors, up to 50% of VTE cases occurs in absence of known triggering factors. Such events are defined as “unprovoked” (uVTE) and have a high risk of recurrence due to the unknown pathogenesis.

Since endothelial dysfunction (ED) play a crucial role in thrombosis, endothelial compartment of uVTE patients deserves to be study in depth to disclose the ED role in uVTE and VTE recurrence, to assess its underlying mechanism(s) and investigate whether the features of ED are restricted to uVTE or shared with secondary VTE.

To do that, ED is studied by characterizing patient-derived Endothelial colony-forming cells (ECFCs) and applying recently optimized in vitro assays that assess the ECFC ability to promote thrombosis.