Health & Medicine - Posted by Karen Peart-Yale on Thursday, March 11, 2010 13:09 - 5 Comments 
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Old arteries blocked? Just grow new ones
Coronary arteries can become blocked with plaque, leading to a decrease in the supply of blood and oxygen to the heart. Severe blockage in multiple major vessels require coronary artery bypass graft surgery. “Successfully growing new arteries could provide a biological option for patients facing bypass surgery,” says Michael Simons. (Courtesy: iStockphoto)
YALE (US)—A new method for growing arteries could lead to a less invasive way to treat coronary artery disease.
“Successfully growing new arteries could provide a biological option for patients facing bypass surgery,” says Michael Simons, chief of the Section of Cardiology at Yale School of Medicine.
Details of the work are reported in the April issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Coronary arteries can become blocked with plaque, leading to a decrease in the supply of blood and oxygen to the heart. Over time, this blockage can lead to debilitating chest pain or heart attack.
Severe blockage in multiple major vessels requires coronary artery bypass graft surgery.
In the past, researchers used growth factors—proteins that stimulate the growth of cells—in an attempt to grow new arteries, but this method was unsuccessful.
Simons and his team studied mice and zebrafish to see if they could simulate arterial formation by switching on and off two signaling pathways: ERK1/2 and PI3K.
“We found that there is cross-talk between the two signaling pathways. One half of the signaling pathway inhibits the other. When we disable the inhibitor mechanism, we are able to grow arteries,” Simons says.
“Instead of using growth factors, we stopped the inhibitor mechanism by using a drug that targets a particular enzyme called PI3-kinase inhibitor.
“Because we’ve located this inhibitory pathway, this opens the possibility of developing a new class of medication to grow new arteries,” Simons adds.
“The next step is to test this finding in a human clinical trial.”
Yale University news: http://opa.yale.edu/
5 Comments
peggy gausmann
syed
how does one sign up for this study?
raj
This is more complicated than what is written here, i need to see this article. Blocking one pathway causes problem with other signaling events, and many of such studies were unsuccessful with human subjects (as has been with cancer).
k morse
One needs to be cautious about blocking inhibitory pathways, because cancer, e.g. leukemia, is the result of runaway replication due to a lack of inhibitory function ( Malfunctioning chromosome)
paul h
Well I don’t know anyting about this but Dr. told me that I’ve grown new artories {3} around one that two years ago they had placed a stent in. Over the last two years that stent had clogged up and completly closed off resulting in another heart attack. when givenagioplasty surgery, they found the stent completly blocked but didn’t do anything to it this time because there were three new artories that had grown around there.
Does this happen alot?
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i hope this pans out i have already had by pass surgey and now need another one