Despite their unique structure, function, origin and role in disease, glomerular endothelial cells (GEnC) have been little studied because of difficulty maintaining them in cell culture. This problem has been addressed by the generation of conditionally immortalised GEnC. Endothelial behaviour is potentially dependent on interactions with podocytes, with communication occurring through growth factors including angiopoietins and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Understanding the effect of these mediators is the first step towards developing a co-culture system simulating the in vivo filtration barrier. In addition the effect of interferon beta (IFNβ) in amelioration of proteinuria in 3 distinct animal models of nephritis led to an investigation into the mechanism of this effect in human podocytes and GEnC in culture Cell culture and co-culture techniques were used to characterise ciGEnC, assess the effects of podocyte-conditioned medium on ciGEnC monolayers and examine the effect of IFNβ oniGEnC and podocyte monolayers.