Vessel Life

If there's a build-up of fatty plaque in an important artery, a cardiovascular surgeon can insert a stent – a small mesh tube – to widen the vessel and keep the blood flowing. These operations can, however, cause damage to the artery’s delicate endothelial lining – similar to that seen in the image (endothelial cells coloured red) – and, such damage is a principle reason many stents ultimately fail. Recent research has discovered that the natural repair of vascular endothelial wounds is driven in part by a protein called connexin 43. This component of cell-to-cell connection points was already known to promote wound healing in the skin and, it turns out, the same is true for blood vessels. After vessel injury, connexin 43 production increases. Without the protein, healing is impaired. Medications designed to boost connexin 43 might therefore help speed arterial repair after stent surgeries and prevent their failure.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image from work by Meghan W. Sedovy and colleagues, Scott R. Johnstone lab
• The Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion, Center for Vascular and Heart Research, Roanoke, VA, USA
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Heart and Circulatory Physiology, November 2025