Coronary Vessel Development

Signaling during epicardium and coronary vessel development.

The epicardium, the tissue layer covering the cardiac muscle (myocardium), develops from the proepicardium, a mass of coelomic progenitors located at the venous pole of the embryonic heart. Proepicardium cells attach to and spread over the myocardium to form the primitive epicardial epithelium. The epicardium subsequently undergoes an epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition to give rise to a popul...

Development of the coronary vessel system.

Formation of the coronary vessels is a fundamental event in heart development. Congenital abnormalities in the coronary system can have major deleterious effects on heart function. It is also possible that subtle variation in the patterning of coronary vessels has significant but uncharacterized effects on myocardial structure and function. In addition, generation of the coronary vascular syste...

Coronary vessel development: the epicardium delivers.

Coronary artery disease accounts for 54% of all cardiovascular disease in the United States. Understanding how coronary vessels develop is likely to uncover novel drug targets and therapeutic strategies that will be useful in directing the repair or remodeling of coronary vessels in adults. Recent insights have identified the importance of cells derived from the proepicardium and epicardium in ...

Towards Consensus on Coronary Vessel Development

Coronary heart disease remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality, and as such, there is a pressing need to develop efficacious therapies. Any future cell-based therapeutic interventions aimed at revascularization of an ischemic heart, or regeneration of damaged coronary vessels, require a clear understanding of the developmental programs that are in place in the embryo. This knowledge ...

Endocardial Cushion Morphogenesis and Coronary Vessel Development Require COUP-TFII