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How regrowing blood vessels could lead to better heart disease treatment in the future

Regrowing blood vessels in a non-invasive way could one day eliminate open-heart surgery.
Written by Boonsri Dickinson, Contributing Editor

Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States. But one professor at the University of Pittsburgh might soon mend broken hearts, is the most literal sense anyway. Pittsburgh professor Yadong Wang figured out that by delivering a critical growth factor directly to the blood vessels in a non-invasive way, he could potentially eliminate the need for open-heart surgery someday.

So far, the treatment has worked in the lab only in animal studies. When researchers injected a growth factor under the skin of mice, the blood vessels began to regrow.

“We had structures that resembled arterioles - small arteries that lead to a network of capillaries,” Wang said in a statement.

The fact that the blood vessels showed signs of repair is significant because currently once tissue is damaged after a heart attack, a patient has to either get a stent or have bypass surgery.

Being able to repair damaged tissue and prevent further scarring, would enable doctors to keep the heart muscles alive and restore the environment that will help blood vessels grow.

Similarly this week, researchers at Northwestern University also announced a way to mind damaged heart tissue. The Northwestern researchers created a synthetic material that could help repair tissue following a heart attack. The material acts like natural proteins that can prime the body to regenerate itself.

Recently, Brown University scientists created a synthetic nanopatch to help the heart tissue regrow, creating a Band Aid that could help bring life back into the dead areas. Also, MIT researchers have designed an implantable sensor that can look for the signs of a heart attack, and could potentially prevent the onset of severe heart disease.

Photo via UPMC

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