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Antioxidants & Redox Signaling Mar 2021Perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT), which is present surrounding most blood vessels, from the aorta to the microvasculature of the dermis, is mainly composed of fat... (Review)
Review
Perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT), which is present surrounding most blood vessels, from the aorta to the microvasculature of the dermis, is mainly composed of fat cells, fibroblasts, stem cells, mast cells, and nerve cells. Although the PVAT is objectively present, its physiological and pathological significance has long been ignored. PVAT was considered as a supporting component of blood vessels and a protective cushion to the vessel wall from the neighboring tissues during relaxation and contraction. Nonetheless, further extensive research found that PVAT actively regulates blood vessel tone through PVAT-derived vasoactive factors, including both relaxing and contracting factors. In addition, PVAT contributes to atherosclerosis through paracrine secretion of a large number of bioactive factors such as adipokines and cytokines. Thereby, PVAT regulates the functions of blood vessels through various mechanisms operating directly on PVAT or on the underlying vessel layers, including vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) and endothelial cells (ECs). PVAT is a unique adipose tissue that plays an essential role in maintaining the vascular structure and regulating vascular function and homeostasis. This review focuses on recent updates on the various PVAT roles in hypertension and atherosclerosis. Future studies should further investigate the actual contribution of alterations in PVAT metabolism to the overall systemic outcomes of cardiovascular disease, which remains largely unknown. In addition, the messengers and underlying mechanisms responsible for the crosstalk between PVAT and ECs and VSMCs in the vascular wall should be systematically addressed, as well as the contributions of PVAT aging to vascular dysfunction.
Topics: Adipose Tissue; Animals; Atherosclerosis; Blood Vessels; Endothelial Cells; Humans; Hypertension; Muscle Cells; Muscle, Smooth, Vascular; Paracrine Communication
PubMed: 32390459
DOI: 10.1089/ars.2020.8103 -
Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology Dec 2011The nervous system relies on a highly specialized network of blood vessels for development and neuronal survival. Recent evidence suggests that both the central and... (Review)
Review
The nervous system relies on a highly specialized network of blood vessels for development and neuronal survival. Recent evidence suggests that both the central and peripheral nervous systems (CNS and PNS) employ multiple mechanisms to shape the vascular tree to meet its specific metabolic demands, such as promoting nerve-artery alignment in the PNS or the development the blood brain barrier in the CNS. In this article we discuss how the nervous system directly influences blood vessel patterning resulting in neuro-vascular congruence that is maintained throughout development and in the adult.
Topics: Animals; Blood Vessels; Blood-Brain Barrier; Brain; Humans; Morphogenesis; Nervous System; Neurons
PubMed: 21978864
DOI: 10.1016/j.semcdb.2011.09.010 -
Physiology (Bethesda, Md.) Oct 2011Blood vessel networks expand to meet oxygen demands via sprouting angiogenesis. This process is heterogeneous but not random; as sprouts form and extend, neighboring... (Review)
Review
Blood vessel networks expand to meet oxygen demands via sprouting angiogenesis. This process is heterogeneous but not random; as sprouts form and extend, neighboring endothelial cells do not sprout but divide. Sprouting is regulated by local sprout guidance cues produced by the vessels themselves, as well as extrinsic cues. Endothelial cells in developing vessels orient in several axes to establish migratory polarity, apical-basolateral polarity, and planar cell polarity. Although little is known about how polarity axes are set up or maintained, they are important for vessel formation and function. This review focuses on the current knowledge of how blood vessel sprouting is regulated and guided, the role of endothelial cell polarity in forming vessels, and how these processes affect vessel function and are potentially perturbed in pathologies with vascular components.
Topics: Animals; Blood Vessels; Cell Polarity; Endothelial Cells; Neovascularization, Physiologic
PubMed: 22013191
DOI: 10.1152/physiol.00018.2011 -
Journal of Biomedicine & Biotechnology 2012Over the years, cardiovascular diseases continue to increase and affect not only human health but also the economic stability worldwide. The advancement in tissue... (Review)
Review
Over the years, cardiovascular diseases continue to increase and affect not only human health but also the economic stability worldwide. The advancement in tissue engineering is contributing a lot in dealing with this immediate need of alleviating human health. Blood vessel diseases are considered as major cardiovascular health problems. Although blood vessel transplantation is the most convenient treatment, it has been delimited due to scarcity of donors and the patient's conditions. However, tissue-engineered blood vessels are promising alternatives as mode of treatment for blood vessel defects. The purpose of this paper is to show the importance of the advancement on biofabrication technology for treatment of soft tissue defects particularly for vascular tissues. This will also provide an overview and update on the current status of tissue reconstruction especially from autologous stem cells, scaffolds, and scaffold-free cellular transplantable constructs. The discussion of this paper will be focused on the historical view of cardiovascular tissue engineering and stem cell biology. The representative studies featured in this paper are limited within the last decade in order to trace the trend and evolution of techniques for blood vessel tissue engineering.
Topics: Animals; Blood Vessel Prosthesis; Blood Vessels; Cardiovascular System; History, 20th Century; Humans; Tissue Engineering; Tissue Scaffolds
PubMed: 23251085
DOI: 10.1155/2012/956345 -
Nature Reviews. Molecular Cell Biology Jan 2009Forces that are associated with blood flow are major determinants of vascular morphogenesis and physiology. Blood flow is crucial for blood vessel development during... (Review)
Review
Forces that are associated with blood flow are major determinants of vascular morphogenesis and physiology. Blood flow is crucial for blood vessel development during embryogenesis and for regulation of vessel diameter in adult life. It is also a key factor in atherosclerosis, which, despite the systemic nature of major risk factors, occurs mainly in regions of arteries that experience disturbances in fluid flow. Recent data have highlighted the potential endothelial mechanotransducers that might mediate responses to blood flow, the effects of atheroprotective rather than atherogenic flow, the mechanisms that contribute to the progression of the disease and how systemic factors interact with flow patterns to cause atherosclerosis.
Topics: Animals; Atherosclerosis; Blood Flow Velocity; Blood Vessels; Humans; Mechanotransduction, Cellular; Risk Factors
PubMed: 19197332
DOI: 10.1038/nrm2596 -
Cardiovascular Research Jan 2022Vasculopathy is a pathological process occurring in the blood vessel wall, which could affect the haemostasis and physiological functions of all the vital tissues/organs... (Review)
Review
Vasculopathy is a pathological process occurring in the blood vessel wall, which could affect the haemostasis and physiological functions of all the vital tissues/organs and is one of the main underlying causes for a variety of human diseases including cardiovascular diseases. Current pharmacological interventions aiming to either delay or stop progression of vasculopathies are suboptimal, thus searching novel, targeted, risk-reducing therapeutic agents, or vascular grafts with full regenerative potential for patients with vascular abnormalities are urgently needed. Since first reported, pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), particularly human-induced PSCs, have open new avenue in all research disciplines including cardiovascular regenerative medicine and disease remodelling. Assisting with recent technological breakthroughs in tissue engineering, in vitro construction of tissue organoid made a tremendous stride in the past decade. In this review, we provide an update of the main signal pathways involved in vascular cell differentiation from human PSCs and an extensive overview of PSC-derived tissue organoids, highlighting the most recent discoveries in the field of blood vessel organoids as well as vascularization of other complex tissue organoids, with the aim of discussing the key cellular and molecular players in generating vascular organoids.
Topics: Blood Vessels; Cell Culture Techniques; Cell Differentiation; Cell Lineage; Cells, Cultured; Endothelial Cells; Humans; Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells; Muscle, Smooth, Vascular; Myocytes, Smooth Muscle; Neovascularization, Pathologic; Neovascularization, Physiologic; Organoids; Phenotype; Signal Transduction; Vascular Diseases
PubMed: 33135070
DOI: 10.1093/cvr/cvaa313 -
Developmental Biology Oct 2018The BMP pathway regulates developmental processes including angiogenesis, yet its signaling outputs are complex and context-dependent. Recently, we showed that SMAD6, an...
The BMP pathway regulates developmental processes including angiogenesis, yet its signaling outputs are complex and context-dependent. Recently, we showed that SMAD6, an intracellular BMP inhibitor expressed in endothelial cells, decreases vessel sprouting and branching both in vitro and in zebrafish. Genetic deletion of SMAD6 in mice results in poorly characterized cardiovascular defects and lethality. Here, we analyzed the effects of SMAD6 loss on vascular function during murine development. SMAD6 was expressed in a subset of blood vessels throughout development, primarily in arteries, while expression outside of the vasculature was largely confined to developing cardiac valves with no obvious embryonic phenotype. Mice deficient in SMAD6 died during late gestation and early stages of postnatal development, and this lethality was associated with vessel hemorrhage. Mice that survived past birth had increased branching and sprouting of developing postnatal retinal vessels and disorganized tight and adherens junctions. In vitro, knockdown of SMAD6 led to abnormal endothelial cell adherens junctions and increased VE-cadherin endocytosis, indicative of activated endothelium. Thus, SMAD6 is essential for proper blood vessel function during murine development, where it appears to stabilize endothelial junctions to prevent hemorrhage and aberrant angiogenesis.
Topics: Adherens Junctions; Animals; Arteries; Blood Vessels; Endothelial Cells; Endothelium, Vascular; Hemorrhage; Intercellular Junctions; Mice; Neovascularization, Pathologic; Neovascularization, Physiologic; Retinal Vessels; Signal Transduction; Smad6 Protein
PubMed: 30098998
DOI: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2018.07.027 -
The International Journal of Lower... Mar 2013Systemic inflammation is associated with impaired wound healing in diabetes mellitus (DM) patients. Using immunohistochemistry techniques, the authors investigated... (Comparative Study)
Comparative Study
Systemic inflammation is associated with impaired wound healing in diabetes mellitus (DM) patients. Using immunohistochemistry techniques, the authors investigated changes in skin inflammation and skin blood vessels in human and experimental diabetes. Comparing to the non-DM human subjects, the total number of inflammatory cells per biopsy and the number of inflammatory cells around blood vessels, a strong indication of inflammation, were higher in DM subjects irrespective of their risk for developing diabetic foot ulcer. Inflammatory cell infiltration was robustly increased in all DM animal models compared with their non-DM controls. The number and density of blood vessels and CD31 positive proliferating endothelial cells around preexisting skin vessels was also higher in the DM patients. However, there were no differences in the skin blood flow between the non-DM and DM subjects. The number of skin blood vessels was also increased in the DM animals; however, these differences were less obvious than the ones observed for inflammatory cells. We conclude that skin inflammation and skin blood vessel density is increased in diabetic human subjects and in rodent and rabbit models of diabetes.
Topics: Animals; Biopsy; Blood Vessels; Dermatitis; Diabetes Mellitus, Experimental; Diabetic Foot; Disease Progression; Female; Follow-Up Studies; Humans; Male; Mice; Mice, Inbred BALB C; Middle Aged; Prospective Studies; Rabbits; Rats; Rats, Sprague-Dawley; Regional Blood Flow; Skin
PubMed: 23446362
DOI: 10.1177/1534734612474303 -
Computational Intelligence and... 2022In recent years, the incidence of diabetes has been increasing year by year. Since most of the fundus lesions are located near blood vessels, the image information is...
In recent years, the incidence of diabetes has been increasing year by year. Since most of the fundus lesions are located near blood vessels, the image information is complex, and the end vessels are difficult to identify. So, a new segmentation method of diabetic retinal vessel images based on particle swarm optimization and salp swarm algorithm is proposed. This paper uses a Gaussian filter to enhance the main blood vessels, and a top-bot hat transform is used to strengthen the end vessels. The preprocessing process is completed by combining and reconstructing the two images through a normalization operation. The improved particle swarm optimization and salp swarm algorithms perform multi-threshold segmentation on the preprocessed vessel images. The best fit value, Structural Similarity Index Measure, Peak Signal to Noise Rati, feature similarity index measure, sensitivity, accuracy, regional consistency, Dice coefficient, Jaccard similarity, and Shannon entropy are selected for comprehensive evaluation and analysis. The results showed that this paper's improved particle swarm-salp swarm algorithm for segmenting diabetic retinal blood vessel images is more efficient, and the threshold is better. The vascular segmentation method in this paper is applied in medical image processing, which improves the accuracy of medical image processing and reduces the computational effort.
Topics: Algorithms; Diabetes Mellitus; Fundus Oculi; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Retinal Vessels
PubMed: 36052032
DOI: 10.1155/2022/1936482 -
Journal of Biomedicine & Biotechnology 2012Multipotent stem/progenitor cells with similar developmental potentials have been independently identified from diverse human tissue/organ cultures. The increasing... (Review)
Review
Multipotent stem/progenitor cells with similar developmental potentials have been independently identified from diverse human tissue/organ cultures. The increasing recognition of the vascular/perivascular origin of mesenchymal precursors suggested blood vessels being a systemic source of adult stem/progenitor cells. Our group and other laboratories recently isolated multiple stem/progenitor cell subsets from blood vessels of adult human tissues. Each of the three structural layers of blood vessels: intima, media, and adventitia has been found to include at least one precursor population, that is, myogenic endothelial cells (MECs), pericytes, and adventitial cells (ACs), respectively. MECs and pericytes efficiently regenerate myofibers in injured and dystrophic skeletal muscles as well as improve cardiac function after myocardial infarction. The applications of ACs in vascular remodeling and angiogenesis/vasculogenesis have been examined. Our recent finding that MECs and pericytes can be purified from cryogenically banked human primary muscle cell culture further indicates their potential applications in personalized regenerative medicine.
Topics: Adult Stem Cells; Blood Vessels; Humans; Tissue Engineering; Wound Healing
PubMed: 22500099
DOI: 10.1155/2012/597439