This Gordon Research Conference focuses a cross-disciplinary look at the highly specialized and structurally and functionally heterogeneous vascular endothelium. The interconnected endothelial network traverses every organ, providing not only a highly interactive fluid phase interface, as a critical component of normal organ physiology, but endothelium also participates in pathological processes of human diseases ranging from cancer and inflammation to diabetes, atherosclerosis and fibrosis. In the tradition of the two preceeding conferences, this third conference will explore diagnostic and therapeutic hypotheses that can be tested with emerging technologies and therapeutic modalities. Fields ranging from developmental biology, immunology, genomics, proteomics, hematology, oncology, pulmonary cardiology, ophthalmology, dermatology, gastroenterology, neuroscience, nephrology, transplant biology stem cell biology and diabetes will be represented in highly integrative sessions. World leading researchers have been assembled to address topics that include: 1) the mediators of injury, dysfunction and cytoprotection in endothelial pathobiology, 2) the function of endothelium in immune organs, 3) specialization of structure and function in the pulmonary circulation, 4) endothelial progression from progenitors to senescence, 5) endothelial transcriptional networks and epigenetics, 6) imaging the endothelium, 7) the blood brain barrier and 8) renal microvascular function and dysfunction. Emphasis in discussion periods and in poster discussions will be placed on drawing parallels and contrasting patterns from disparate disciplines, to provide new testable hypotheses. We anticipate that the conference will serve, as its predecessors have, to catalyze further definition of the future of this rapidly moving integrative field.