Researchers At Yale Use Medication To Grow New Arteries

Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine have had success with an experiment to grow new arteries. They are hoping to discover a less invasive way to deal with arterial blockage, which can lead to serious surgery.

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.”

Futurity: “Old arteries blocked? Just grow new ones”

[via Edge of Tomorrow]