Also Included In: Rehabilitation / Physical Therapy
Article Date: 02 Aug 2013 - 1:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Study offers promising new direction for organ regeneration and tissue repair
Because most human tissues do not regenerate spontaneously, advances in tissue repair and organ regeneration could benefit many patients with a wide variety of medical conditions.
Now a research team led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center has identified an entirely new approach to enhance normal tissue growth, a finding that could have widespread therapeutic applications.
Their findings were published on-line in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Tissue regeneration is a process that is not fully understood, but previous research has demonstrated that endothelial cells lining the insides of small blood vessels play a key role in tissue growth. It is also known that these endothelial cells generate chemical messengers called epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs), which stimulate blood vessel formation in response to tissue injury.
In this new research, first author Dipak Panigrahy, MD, an investigator in BIDMC's Center for Vascular Biology Research, and his colleagues wanted to find out how EETs might participate in organ and tissue regeneration. To answer this question, they created seven different mouse models. The models focused on liver, kidney and lung regeneration; wound healing; corneal vascularization; and retinal vascularization.
"We used genetic and pharmacologic tools to manipulate EET levels in the animals to show that EETs play a critical role in accelerating tissue growth, providing the first in vivo demonstration that pharmacological modulation of EETs can affect organ regeneration," explains Panigrahy, an Instructor in Pathology at Harvard Medical School. Administering synthetic EETs spurred tissue growth in the research models; conversely, lowering EET levels - by either manipulating genes or administering drugs - delayed tissue regeneration.
The team also demonstrated that proteins called soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) inhibitors, known to elevate EET levels, promoted liver and lung regeneration. (sEH is the main metabolizing enzyme of EETs.)
"Our results offer a mechanistic rationale for evaluating sEH inhibitors as novel therapeutics for a number of human diseases such as hepatic insufficiency after liver damage and diseases characterized by immature lung development, such as bronchopulmonary dysplasia," says Panigrahy, adding that the use of topical sEH inhibitors on the skin might also be useful for the acceleration of wound healing.
The researchers suspected that EETs were stimulating tissue regeneration by way of blood vessel formation, specifically by producing vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) to promote vessel growth. As predicted, when the investigators depleted VEGF in the mice, EETs' effects on organ regeneration disappeared.
"Discovering EETs' role could be of critical importance to help control the repair of liver, lungs and kidneys," says senior author Mark Kieran, MD, PhD, of the Division of Pediatric Oncology at Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. "Since diseases of these organs are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the North American population, the opportunity to modulate the regeneration of healthy tissue could have significant therapeutic implications for many patients." These findings may also apply to conditions or physical defects that lead to the loss of specialized cells in other organ systems, such as the nervous system and the immune system.
The investigators stress that it will be important to determine whether EETs affect other factors, besides VEGF, in influencing tissue repair. Additionally, they add, the beneficial effects of EETs will have to be carefully weighed against their finding that direct administration of EETs can stimulate cancer growth in animal models. Several clinical trials that are currently testing the potential of sEH inhibitors for purposes other than organ regeneration or wound repair could offer valuable insights into the safety of elevating EET levels in patients.
"Although our work suggests synthetic EETs would promote wound healing after surgery, more clinical trials are needed to assess the potential benefits and possible risks of these novel lipids," adds co-corresponding author Darryl Zeldin, MD, Scientific Director for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health.
In addition to laying the groundwork for future research, the investigators point out that this study highlights the benefits of experts from varying disciplines and organizations working together, noting that coauthors work in departments ranging from oncology to ophthalmology and from pharmacotherapy to transplantation. They included investigators from Boston Children's Hospital; the Institute for Systems Biology; the University of California, Davis; the National Institute of Environmental Health Science at the National Institutes of Health; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; the Lahey Clinic Medical Center; the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; and Schepens Eye Research Institute/Massachusetts Eye and Ear.
Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.Visit our biology / biochemistry section for the latest news on this subject.
Epoxyeicosanoids promote organ and tissue regeneration, PNAS published online before print July 29, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1311565110
In addition to Panigrahy, Kieran and Zeldin, coauthors include Bruce D. Hammock (co-corresponding author); Brian T. Kalish, Sui Huang, Diane R. Bielenberg, Hau D. Lee, Jun Yang, Matthew L. Edin, Craig R. Lee, Ofra Benny, Dayna K. Mudge, Catherine E. Butterfield, Akiko Mammoto, Tadanori Mammoto, Bora Inceoglu, Roger L. Jenkins, Mary A. Simpson, Tomoshige Akino, Fred B. Lih, Kenneth B. Tomer, Donald E. Ingber, John R. Falck, Vijaya L. Manthati, Arja Kaipainen, Patricia A. D'Amore, and Mark Puder.
This work was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute (RO1CA148633-01A4); the Stop and Shop Pediatric Brain Tumor Fund; the C. J. Buckley Pediatric Brain Tumor Fund; the Children's Hospital Boston Surgical Foundation and the Vascular Biology Program; the Robert A. Welch Foundation (GL625910); the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (Z01 025034 and Z01 050167); the National Institutes of Health (R01 GM088199; GM31278; R01 ES002710; R01 ES013933, and CA045548; and the NIEHS Superfund Basic Research Program (NIH Grant P42 ES004699). The work was also supported through the Joshua Ryan Rappaport Fellowship and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Fellowship.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:MLA
3 Aug. 2013.
Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.
'Study offers promising new direction for organ regeneration and tissue repair'
Please note that we publish your name, but we do not publish your email address. It is only used to let you know when your message is published. We do not use it for any other purpose. Please see our privacy policy for more information.
If you write about specific medications or operations, please do not name health care professionals by name.
All opinions are moderated before being included (to stop spam). We reserve the right to amend opinions where we deem necessary.
Contact Our News Editors
For any corrections of factual information, or to contact the editors please use our feedback form.
Please send any medical news or health news press releases to:
Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our terms and conditions.
No comments:
Post a Comment