Vessel

Mystery Blood Vessel Disorder Implicated In 'Mini' Strokes

Physicians have long been puzzled by a condition called intracranial arterial dolichoectasia, in which the larger arteries of the brain become elongated and misshapen. Typically, it has been considered a complication of atherosclerosis ("hardening of the arteries"), and not directly life-threatening. However, there is recent evidence that people with dolichoectasia are more likely to have aortic...

Nano-bumps could help repair clogged blood vessels

Biomedical engineers at Purdue University have shown that "vascular stents" used to repair arteries might perform better if their surfaces contained "nano-bumps" that mimic tiny features found in living tissues. The researchers already have shown in a series of experiments that bone and cartilage cells in petri dishes attach better to materials that possess smaller surface bumps than are f...

Unexpected lock and key mechanism found for the assembly of tumor blood vessels

A critical lock and key mechanism that allows the final step in the completion of new blood vessel formation has been identified by a University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine team in research that promises to lead to a new way to halt tumor growth by cutting off the tumor blood supply. The research team led by Judith Varner, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine at UC...

Stanford doctors advance in bid to turn mice stem cells into blood vessels

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have taken a first step toward growing blood vessels from stem cells that could eventually be transplanted into living organisms. Starting with embryonic stem cells derived from mice, surgical resident Oscar Abilez, MD, and colleagues have successfully differentiated the stem cells into myocytes, one of the building blocks of blood...

Researchers learn how blood vessel cells cope with their pressure-packed job

UCSD scientists have gained a better understanding of how repetitive stretching of endothelial cells that line arteries can make them healthy and resistant to vascular diseases. UCSD researchers stretched cells in a workout chamber the size of a credit card to gain a better understanding of how repetitive stretching of endothelial cells that line arteries can make them healthy and resista...

UT Southwestern researchers unravel control of growing blood vessels

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have discovered a basic mechanism by which smooth muscle cells that line the blood vessels can grow ?sometimes abnormally ?suggesting methods of treatment for various coronary diseases. Abnormal growth of cells inside blood vessels is involved in hypertension, coronary artery disease, tumors called leiosarcomas and other conditions. "By underst...

Bare metal stents deliver gene therapy to heart vessels with less inflammation in animal studies

Improved materials may allow stents, tiny metal scaffolds inserted into blood vessels, to better deliver beneficial genes to patients with heart disease, by reducing the risk of inflammation that often negates initial benefits. The new technique, using a compound that binds in an extremely thin layer to bare metal surfaces, may have potential uses in other areas of medicine that make use of metal...

Group proves it's possible to grow new lung alveoli by growing new blood vessels

The good news is that medical advances in perinatal care have allowed us to save many more premature babies. The bad news is they're often at risk of developing bronchopulmonary dysplasia--a chronic lung disease caused by having to place the tiny infants on ventilators and oxygen-rich therapy for acute respiratory failure. It's really a win-lose situation: the babies are saved but they pay...

Bioengineers create stable networks of blood vessels

Yale biomedical engineers have created an implantable system that can form and stabilize a functional network of fine blood vessels critical for supporting tissues in the body, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. For body tissue to survive it must receive oxygen delivered through the finest of blood vessels. Led by Erin Lavik, assistant professor...

Proteins stop blood-vessel and tumor growth in mice

Researchers at National Jewish Medical and Research Center report in the March issue of Cancer Research that a pair of promising proteins, known as fibulins 3 and 5, slow the growth of cancer tumors in mice by preventing blood vessels from sprouting. The proteins are promising candidates for use in cancer therapy. "Healthy humans produce fibulin proteins, which regulate cell proliferation...

Proteins spur diabetic mice models to grow blood vessels, nerves

University of Utah researchers have taken a potentially powerful new therapy for treating diabetes, peripheral vascular disease, and other illnesses out of the test tube and into animals by demonstrating it restores nerve and blood vessel growth in mice. The research has particularly important implications for the estimated 21 million Americans with diabetes, a disease that damages both ne...

Scientists discover why cornea is transparent and free of blood vessels, allowing vision

Scientists at the Harvard Department of Ophthalmology's Schepens Eye Research Institute and Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI) are the first to learn why the cornea, the clear window of the eye, is free of blood vessels--a unique phenomenon that makes vision possible. The key, say the researchers, is the unexpected presence of large amounts of the protein VEGFR-3 (vascular endothelial gro...

Schepens scientists are first to discover angiogenesis switch inside blood vessel cells

Scientists at Schepens Eye Research Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, are the first to discover a switch inside blood vessel cells that controls angiogenesis (new blood vessel growth). The switch, they learned, is turned on and off by the balance between two enzymes (known as PI3K and PLCg) that compete for the use of the same lipid membrane to fulfill opposite missions, growth a...

A new jump start for aging blood vessels

Recent studies show promise for significantly reducing vascular aging by inactivating TNFa, which has been linked to blood vessel dysfunction and cell death. The related report by Csiszar et al., "Vasculoprotective effects of anti-TNFa treatment in aging," appears in the January issue of The American Journal of Pathology. Age-related vascular diseases, including high blood pressure, heart...

Cancer cells forming blood vessels send their copper to the edge

New information about a link between the growth of blood vessels critical to the spread of cancer and the copper in our bodies has been discovered by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago, using a beamline at the Advanced Photon Source. Growing new blood vessels from existing ones ?a process called angiogenesis ?is import...

Anti-fungal drug stops blood vessel growth

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered to their surprise that a drug commonly used to treat toenail fungus can also block angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels commonly seen in cancers. The drug, itraconazole, already is FDA approved for human use, which may fast-track its availability as an antiangiogenesis drug. In mice induced to have excess blood vessel growth, treatment...

Targeting sugar on blood vessels may inhibit cancer growth

In a study that could point to novel therapies to prevent cancer spread, or metastasis, researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have targeted a sugar that supports blood vessel growth in the tumor. Their findings will be published in the May 7 on-line issue of Journal of Cell Biology. Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death and an ar...