More or Less

After a heart attack, growing new blood vessels (angiogenesis) is essential to repair the damage. In cancer patients, preventing blood vessel growth can starve a tumour and prevent expansion. To investigate the effectiveness of potential new treatments to boost or block angiogenesis, researchers have developed a platform for testing the impact of various interventions on sprouting – the formation of new vessels from existing ones. They confirmed that cells lining the aorta – the body’s largest artery – sprout more in low oxygen conditions (pictured, right) than normal (left), showing the platform can support normal blood vessel growth patterns. They then screened 105 molecules and identified two enzymes that alter gene expression to regulate this vessel sprouting – one promoting growth and the other restricting it. This both provides promising information about these potential stop and go interventions, and provides a green light to screen future drugs.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by M. Beter and colleagues
• A.I. Virtanen Institute for Molecular Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• Published in Scientific Reports, January 2025