There may be new hope for diabetics who have lost the use of a limb to vascular disease.
An injectable regenerative gel causes new vessels to grow and restore blood flow in the limbs of diabetic mice with severe vascular disease, and the inventors of the experimental therapy say it could be ready for clinical testing in just a few years.
Peripheral vascular disease is an expensive and often devastating medical condition that affects millions of people and has no long-term treatment options. It is especially prevalent among diabetics, and up to 25 percent of diabetic patients with peripheral vascular disease require amputation. In a recent demonstration using diabetic mice, researchers led by Aaron Baker, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, showed that their regenerative gel restored 85 percent of normal blood flow to limbs with diseased blood vessels.
Today’s clinical options—physical therapy, drugs, surgically placed stents, and bypass surgery—are only temporary fixes, says Baker. Peripheral vascular disease eventually causes them to fail. This has led scientists to experiment with therapies based on proteins called growth factors, which are instrumental in the creation of new blood vessels during wound healing and in the growth of tumors. The idea, Baker explains, is to bypass the diseased vessels with new ones generated by “your own regenerative processes.”…
Source: MIT Tech Review