StemCell Therapy

University of Georgia stem cell researcher Steve Stice shows stem cells from a tank in his lab in Athens, Ga.

WEDNESDAY, June 6 (HealthDay News) -- A previously unknown type of stem cell is the culprit behind blocked blood vessels that can lead to heart attack and stroke, new research in mice suggests.

It's long been believed that smooth muscle cells within blood vessel walls combined with cholesterol and fat to clog arteries. But in research with mice, a team at the University of California, Berkeley found that's not the case.

[Read: Stem Call Study Shows Promising Results Against Heart Failure.]

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/05/10/stem-cell-study-shows-promising-results-against-heart-failure

Using genetic tracing, the investigators determined that a type of stem cell called a multipotent vascular stem cell is to blame and said it should be the focus in the search for new treatments.

"For the first time, we are showing evidence that vascular diseases are actually a kind of stem cell disease," principal investigator Song Li, a professor of bioengineering and a researcher at the Berkeley Stem Cell Center, said in a university news release. "This work should revolutionize therapies for vascular diseases because we now know that stem cells rather than smooth muscle cells are the correct therapeutic target."

The study was published June 6 in the journal Nature Communications.

"This is groundbreaking and provocative work, as it challenges existing dogma," said Dr. Deepak Srivastava, director of the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease at UC San Francisco, who provided some of the mouse vascular tissues used in the study.

[Read:Improved Stem Cell Line May Avoid Cancer Risk.]

More here:
Stem Cells Behind Clogged Arteries

This entry was posted on June 7, 2012 at 1:14 am and is filed under Fat Stem Cells. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |