Saving Lives, Minimally Invasive: Cell Therapy for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms

Regenerative repair of elastic matrix in the AAA wall is naturally poor due to intrinsically poor elastogenicity of adult and diseased vascular SMCs [4]. In this scenario, cell therapy involving delivery of an alternate, possibly autologous cell type that would exhibit the high contractility of terminally differentiated SMCs in healthy vessels and yet exhibit the high elastogenic potential of SMC progenitor cells in early development would proffer an attractive prospect to stimulate elastogenesis lasting new elastic matrix assembly by diseased SMCs in the AAA wall . Based on prior studies in our lab that demonstrated superior elastogenicity of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell (BM-MSC)-derived SMCs (BM-SMCs) and their ability to provide pro-elastogenic and anti-proteolytic stimuli to aneurysmal SMCs [5], [6], the overall goal of this study is to understand the pro-elastogenic and anti-proteolytic behavior of BM-MSCs derived SMCs in long term in vitro 2D and 3D culture, investigate their fate an in vivo rat model of induced AAA, and to seek preliminary evidence of their therapeutic efficacy for AAA treatment.