Introduction Vascular smooth muscle cells (SMC) are highly specialized cells that regulate blood vessel tone and blood pressure. Mature differentiated SMC have a low cell proliferation and migration rate, low synthetic activity, and express a unique repertoire of contractile proteins, ion channels, and signaling molecules required to support cell contractile functions (1, 2). However, SMC are very plastic and can reversibly change their phenotype in response to environmental cues (3).