ES to endothelium by VEGF tx

Singapore -

The ability to generate new endothelial cells would allow for treatment of a wide variety of diseases in which ischemia acts as a culprit. Use of stem cells, as well a growth factors for stimulation of new blood vessel production, a process called angiogenesis has been a topic of intense research and clinical investigation.

In a recent paper (Rufaihah et al. Directing endothelial differentiation of human embryonic stem cells via transduction with an adenoviral vector expressing the VEGF gene J Gene Med. 2007 Apr 10) a new method of generating endothelial cells from stem cells was disclosed.

The authors cultured ES cells to generating embryoid bodies, dissociated the embryoid bodies into single cell suspension, and transfected wtih an adenoviral construct that expresses VEGF-165.

It appears that this transfection induced differentiation of the ES cells into cells expressing transcripts for VEGF, Ang-1, Flt-1, Tie-2, CD34, CD31, CD133 and Flk-1, and protein expression of CD133. The cells also appeared to undertake an endothelial-like morphology.

The paper provides an interesting and simple method of generating endothelial-like cells from ES cells. It will be interesting to test these cells out in models of ischemia back to back to other stem cell sources with angiogenic potential such as adipose and cord blood stem cells.