How turbo cells help grow new arteries
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London - Doctors are using supercharged cells to grow new arteries for the heart. The researchers say the innovation could help patients who are too unwell to undergo surgery to tackle blocked arteries.
Blocked arteries in the heart occur when fatty deposits harden and restrict blood flow. This results in heart disease, which causes 74 000 deaths each year in the UK.
Treatments include lifestyle changes such as taking more exercise and medication to widen the arteries, but in severe cases surgery is needed to bypass the blockage.
One option involves surgeons inserting a tiny wire tube, called a stent, into the blocked artery, which widens it and restores blood flow. Surgeons insert the tube via an artery in the wrist, arm or groin, and guide it to the heart using a thin, flexible tube. The procedure can be performed under local anaesthetic.
However, if multiple arteries are blocked, then surgeons must take a vein from elsewhere in the body, usually from the groin or leg, which they use to bypass the blocked artery.
Every year the NHS performs more than 20 000 of these coronary artery graft procedures, but around one in five patients who require such surgery are unable to undergo the op — which is performed under general anaesthetic — because they are too frail. Having multiple stents may be an option, but they can also become blocked.
Now researchers hope they have found a possible treatment for these patients.
The researchers from University College Cork in Ireland are using genetic engineering to create supercharged healing cells, which will trigger the growth of new blood vessels in the heart.
These vessels will provide a bypass route around the blockage and restore blood flow.
The team is using cells that naturally line blood vessels — called smooth muscle cells — and is genetically engineering them in the lab to release very high amounts of a substance called a growth factor. These naturally occurring substances aid healing in the body and trigger the formation of new cells.
In the new study, published in the journal Biomaterials, the team coated a stent with the genetically engineered cells and inserted it into the heart. Once in place, the cells released high concentrations of growth factors, which triggered the formation of new blood vessels.
In early animal experiments, the technique significantly increased the blood flow to a level that could previously only be achieved through surgery. The research shows that concentrations of growth factors were more than ten times higher in treated animals compared with a control group. Plans are already in place to test the technology in patients who require bypass surgery but would otherwise be deemed unfit for surgical intervention, and these trials are expected to be completed over the next three years.
Commenting on the trial, Dr Jonathan Lyne, consultant cardiologist in Dublin and the UK, said the results looked promising.
“This is a very interesting development, but whether this technique can offer a sustained and durable alternative will take many studies and time.”
Meanwhile, Dutch scientists are investigating whether high amounts of magnesium can help improve the health of blood vessels by making them more flexible.
A build-up of fatty deposits in the walls of the arteries can make them stiffen, which means they can’t expand and contract properly, leading to increased blood pressure.
In a trial with 60 patients at Maastricht University, patients are taking daily supplements of the mineral or placebo for six months. It is thought magnesium may help partly by boosting the production of nitric oxide, needed for the arteries to relax. - Daily Mail