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(Circulation. 2002;105:672.)
© 2002 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorials

Stem Cells Combined With Gene Transfer for Therapeutic Vasculogenesis

Magic Bullets?

Elizabeth G. Nabel, MD

From the Cardiovascular Branch, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md.

Correspondence to Elizabeth G. Nabel, MD, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Bldg10/8C103, 10 Center Dr, Bethesda, MD 20892. E-mail enabel@nih.gov

Key Words: Editorials • angiogenesis • cells • endothelium • gene therapy

Discoveries in one scientific field sometimes have the unexpected result of igniting a major step forward or new direction in another field. We are in the early phases of one of these sea changes. Advances in stem cell therapies are progressing at a rapid clip and are providing the field of gene therapy with an expanded platform of technologies for the introduction of recombinant genes into human tissues. Likewise, a decade worth of experience in gene therapy provides stem cell researchers with a jump-start. Indeed, it is likely and probable that these 2 fields will eventually merge due to significant scientific and technical overlap.

See p 732

The major contribution of the study by Iwaguro et al¹ in this issue of Circulation is the demonstration that gene transfer of vectors encoding VEGF into endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) ex vivo and injection of gene modified EPCs into ischemic muscle in vivo increases neovascularization in an animal model of hindlimb ischemia. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells from human volunteers were cultured in a special cocktail that facilitates growth of EPCs—plating on fibronectin and grown in the presence of multiple growth factors, such as endothelial cell basal medium, fetal bovine serum, human VEGF-A, human FGF-2, human EGF, IGF-1, and ascorbic acid—as previously characterized by this group.² After 7 days in culture, EPCs were transduced with adenoviral vectors encoding a murine VEGF¹⁶⁴ gene or a control reporter gene. Proliferative indices and adhesion properties were measured ex vivo in order to characterize the phenotype of the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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