Plasma tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) has long been considered to be the product of the endothelial cells that line the various parts of the vascular system regardless of vessel size or location. To determine whether this was truly the case in vivo, the distribution of tPA in the endothelium of the mouse lung and other tissues was evaluated. Immunohistochemical analysis of normal lung tissue showed positive staining limited to the endothelial cells of the bronchial arteries regardless of size with few cells of the pulmonary circulation associated with tPA. The pulmonary vessels that did contain endothelial cell-derived tPA were consistently between 7 and 30 µm in diameter. No capillary or large vessel pulmonary endothelium ever stained positive. These results were also observed in primate lung tissue where the bronchial endothelium of all vessels, even down to capillary size, contained tPA while none of the pulmonary endothelium did. Prolonged exposure of mice to hyperoxic conditions promotes acute lung injury and associated inflammation. Using this model, the effect of inflammation on endothelial cell tPA expression was evaluated. A 4.5-fold increase in the number of pulmonary vessels staining positive for tPA was observed after 66 hours with all of these vessels having a diameter between 7 and 30 µm. Again, none of the endothelium of large arteries or veins nor the capillaries had tPA. Whole tissue tPA mRNA increased dramatically with hyperoxia and in situ hybridization analysis showed tPA mRNA in the endothelium of the same types of vessels as antigen. The tPA localized to both the bronchial and pulmonary endothelium was active with neither tPA-PAI-1 complexes nor urokinase found in perfused lung tissue. These results indicate that endothelial cell tPA expression, either constitutive or induced by a pathologic event, is a function of a highly select group of endothelial cells which are defined by their association with vessels of discrete size and/or anatomic location. Thus, the widely held concept that the steady state level of plasma tPA is maintained through its constitutive production by all endothelial cells of the vascular system is invalid. Also suggested is the possibility that endothelial cell tPA might play a broader role than simply maintaining vessel patency as a component of the fibrinolytic pathway and contribute to complex dynamic processes such as inflammation.