A blood vessel within a wound
The discovery of a regenerative stem cell active in human blood vessels could help patients with diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The University of Queensland Dr Jatin Patel said the finding overcomes one of the biggest hurdles in understanding cardiovascular disease and how wounds heal. "It will allow research to focus on improving the use of blood vessels which are often under strain in patients with conditions like cardiovascular disease and diabetes," Dr Patel said. He has been at the forefront of a skin vascular research program led by UQ's Associate Professor Kiarash Khosrotehrani investigating rare cells that bear the major responsibility of forming and maintaining our blood vessels. "There had been a lot of conjecture about how blood vessels regenerate in the adult system," Dr Patel said. "Research had never been able to show if stem cells actually exist in the vascular system but now we can definitively say they do. "It was believed that if these stem cells did exist that they must originate from bone marrow, but we've determined they actually reside within a person's own blood vessels.
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