Blood Vessel Cells Repair and Regenerate Organs

Summary:
                  One day there may be no organ transplants due to the new info that scientists and doctors have found out recently. They have figure out that the blood vessel cells can regenerate and repair organs. The blood vessel cells in our body don’t automatically fix the damaged organ because the blood vessels are usually inflamed or damaged when the organ is damaged. This doesn’t let the cells do their jobs.  Scientist and doctors have figured out that endothelial cells, the cells that make up the blood vessels, adapt to each organs metabolic, biomechanical, inflammatory and immunological needs. They have not quite figured out how the endothelial cells adapt, but they have tested it on a liver of a mouse and could not tell the native cells from the ones they injected in. The cell that the scientists injected into the mouse’s liver and take the phenotype of the cells that already existed because of the unique microenvironment in the organ. Eventually doctors could be injecting these cells in to horses to stop tumor growth and maybe it could be target certain things inside of the diseased organ and repair only what is needed not destroying anything in good shape. Before this idea can be tested on humans, more research and investigating must happen.

Relevance: 

             This article relates to our cell unit because the blood vessel’s cells repair organs. In our cell unit we talked about how cells repair different things. For example, we talked about when we cut our selves more cells are made to fill up the hole in our skin. We also learned about ways to stop cancer and in this article it says that the blood vessel cells can stop tumors from growing in horses. So maybe eventually this will stop tumor growth in humans. It would be a way for the doctors to inject cells and they would not harm the body as much as the current treatments. This also relates to the cell theory because in the article it talks about how the blood vessel cells adapt to the environment they are in and the scientists could not tell the difference between the native ones and the ones they injected. It relates to the cell theory because the cell theory states that all cells are the basic unit of structure and function. If they weren’t then all of the cells they inject would not have any purpose, but because there are the functions of an organism they help the organ in the organism do it’s functions.   

Link:
URL: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131008152218.htm
Author: Weill Cornell Medical College
Date of Publication: October 8, 2013
By: Francesca Sajedi