More than 27 million people in the world suffer from peripheral arterial disease (PAD) , an obstruction of the blood vessels outside the heart, generally those that supply the legs, arms and organs located below the stomach. This ailment affects diabetics with particular virulence, and the severity of the PAD often leaves no alternative but the amputation of a limb.
Lately, research to treat this ailment has focused on a group of proteins grouped under the name of growth factor , which under normal conditions are responsible for building new blood vessels when a tumor is growing or the body tries to heal an injury . The problem is that this regenerative therapy does not work very well with humans, since diabetes eliminates another protein, called syndecan-4, without which the growth factor loses all its effectiveness.
To solve this, a group of researchers led by Aaron Baker, professor of biotechnology at the University of Austin in Texas, has created a gel that combines the two substances and has tested it in diabetic mice suffering from advanced cases of peripheral arterial disease with very good results. promising: the injection regenerated 85% of their damaged blood vessels . Now, the scientists will repeat the experiment with larger animals.
Last March, another group of researchers from the University of California made public their work with another injectable gel to treat PAD , this time essentially composed of the extracellular matrix (that is, the material of the tissues that acts as a species glue for cells) from muscles. As indicated in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Basic to Translational, the mice that received the gel experienced a significant recovery of both blood circulation and muscle tone in the affected limb .
