A pproximately 15 million patients suffer from coronary and peripheral atherosclerotic diseases in the United States alone. 1 The evolving development of medical and surgical therapies has significantly improved the physician's ability to manage these patients, yet many continue to suffer debilitating symptoms from their disease and remain at risk for myocardial infarction, limb loss, and death...

Controllable induction of blood vessel formation (angiogenesis) presents an important therapeutic goal in ischemic diseases and is also beneficial in various normal physiological processes. In this study, we have shown that nanoparticles of celecoxib, a lipophilic nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, effectively evoke therapeutic angiogenesis in animal models, in both normal and ischemic organs...

The identification of angiogenic growth factors, such as vascular endothelial growth factor and fibroblast growth factor, has fueled interest in using such factors to induce therapeutic angiogenesis. The results of numerous animal studies and clinical trials have offered promise for new treatment strategies for various ischemic diseases. Increased understanding of the cellular and molecular bio...

In this issue of Circulation, Baumgartner et al 1 report a significant advance in angiogenic gene therapy. The authors induced collateral neovascularization in 10 critically ischemic limbs in 9 patients by the intramuscular gene transfer of naked plasmid DNA encoding the 165-amino-acid isoform of the human angiogenic protein, vascular endothelial growth factor (phVEGF165). The plasmid DNA was i...

Efforts to stimulate tissue vascularization in patients with ischemia resulting from coronary or peripheral arterial disease (therapeutic angiogenesis1,2) have passed through several scientific phases over the last dozen years, based on our increased understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying vascular homeostasis (Table). In the first phase, a single angiogenic growth factor, or its c...

Considered during the past decades as cell dust, microparticles are now deemed true biomarkers and vectors of biological information between cells. Depending on their origin, the composition of microparticles varies and the subsequent message transported by them, such as proteins, mRNA, or miRNA, can differ. Recent studies have described microparticles as "cargos" of deleterious information in ...

Despite the improvements in medical, surgical and endovascular therapies, vascular disease is still a significant, critical clinical problem. The advances in understanding the mechanisms of neovascularization and the accumulated experiences of successful therapeutic application in animal models have raised expectations for therapeutic angiogenesis as a promising treatment option. However, the l...

The rapid development of angiogenic growth factor therapy for patients with advanced ischemic heart disease over the last 5 years offers hope of a new treatment strategy based on generation of new blood supply in the diseased heart. However, as the field of therapeutic coronary angiogenesis is maturing from basic and preclinical investigations to clinical trials, many new and presently unresolv...

Angiogenesis is the growth of new blood vessels. In the two major forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, robust angiogenesis exists, and its blockade may have therapeutic potential, as shown in animal models of experimental intestinal inflammation. While abundant literature is available on the positive regulators of intestinal pathological angiogenesi...