ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Angiogenesis



Article Critique - Angiogenesis

An evaluation of the article reveals that scientists have made a breakthrough in cellular medicine: several dozen patients have experienced the unique method of recovery of the peripheral nerves and blood vessels by injecting cells derived from fat. Scientists and physicians from the Kazan Federal University, Kazan State Medical University and the Republican Clinical Hospital devised and tested a new way of using the already known in cosmetology stromal-vascular fraction - a dense biomass, free from the lighter cells forming fat (Li, et. al., 2005). Previously deleted during liposuction fat surgeons simply discarded, but now it is considered a valuable material. Released from his weight commonly used to facelift, wrinkles, increase breast and in regenerative medicine is emerging to fill the soft tissue defects. This is not the stem cells in a pure form, and the rich fraction of adipose tissue of the patient.

However, the clinical needs are still unmet and many problems remain. One dif?culty in antiangiogenic therapy is the selective up-regulation of other angiogenic factors leading to resistance to anti-VEGF therapy. Another issue is that mature blood vessels covered by pericytes (PCs) or smooth muscle cells (SMCs) are more resistant to antiangiogenic therapy and dif?cult to prune. Antiangiogenic strategies targeting not only vascular endothelial cells (ECs), but also PCs, SMCs and other proangiogenic cells are therefore desired. In addition, emerging drug resistance (3) and side effects (4) have also become challenging obstacles to overcome (Li, et. al., 2005). Thus, the identi?cation additional pleiotropic factors affecting multiple vascular and nonvascular cell types important for pathological angiogenesis, together with a better understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms, is warranted. Neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a major cause of blindness in aged population in the Western society as a result of outgrowth of new blood vessels from the choroid, if uncontrolled, resulting in retinal detachment and vision loss.

Current anti-VEGF therapies can halt vision loss in some patients with AMD. However, not all patients with neovascular AMD respond to the currently available treatments, implicating the existence of other angiogenic factors involved. Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), one of the most common causes of vision loss in childhood, is a condition caused primarily by the overgrowth of abnormal blood vessels throughout the retina. Current treatments for ROP include laser therapy and cryotherapy, both of which destroy the side vision to a certain extent, and not all patients with ROP respond to such treatments. Thus, more effective antineovascularization therapies are still needed. PDGF-CC was discovered (5, 6) after many years of intensive studies on PDGF-AA and PDGF-BB. The biological function of PDGF-CC remains largely unexplored. PDGF-CC protein is produced as a secreted homodimer and needs to be proteolytically processed for receptor binding (Li, et. al., 2005).

PDGF-CC binds to and activates PDGF receptor (PDGFR)-a (5). When PDGFR-ß is coexpressed with PDGFR-a in the same cells, it can also be activated by PDGF-CC (7-9). PDGF-CC is critically required for embryonic development, as PDGF-CC-de?cient mice die postnatally as a result of ...