Hearty Connections

Just like any other muscle, the heart also needs a steady flow of blood to keep it fuelled with oxygen and nutrients. This comes from the coronary circulation: special blood vessels that form a dense network spreading deep into the heart muscle. If these vessels get blocked or damaged then the heart muscle can be starved of oxygen and stop working properly, leading to coronary heart disease or a heart attack. The precursors of the coronary blood vessels are laid down by specialised stem cells early in development – a process that’s recreated and mapped out in these images of blood vessel stem cells forming new capillaries in plastic dishes. Coronary heart disease is a major cause of death and illness in many countries around the world, so understanding how these vessels form and work properly is a key step in figuring out how they can be repaired or replumbed.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

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Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image from work by Stanislao Igor Travisano and colleagues
• Intercellular Signalling in Cardiovascular Development and Disease Laboratory, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC), Madrid, Spain
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, December 2019