Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist
After 9 years of work, researchers in Adelaide, Australia have discovered a new type of cell within the wall of the body’s largest artery, the aorta.
They believe the finding has the potential to enhance future treatments in wound healing; growing blood vessels in ischemic tissues; and in chronic inflammatory disease atherosclerosis.
The research was carried out in mice, but the researchers have identified a similar population of cells in very early preliminary studies in humans.
The cells are named “EndoMac progenitors” for their unique ability to transform into 2 specific types of cells: endothelial cells, which form blood vessels, and macrophages, a type of immune cell.
“Both endothelial cells and macrophages are intimately associated when it comes to establishing new blood vessels, or angiogenesis,” Dr Sanuri Liyanage of the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) told Cosmos.
Liyanage and colleagues found that EndoMac progenitors respond to tissue damage or poor blood flow (ischemia) by differentiating into endothelial cells and macrophages, helping to grow new blood vessels.
“The discovery of these progenitors helps us understand tissues around the body and how they maintain and respond to injury, and how they mount inflammatory responses and form vasculature,” she says.
The researchers found that EndoMac progenitors originate in the “extra-embryonic yolk sac” in early development and exist in various adult tissues in their “naive” undifferentiated form.
“They persist into adulthood and provide a local supply of mature macrophages, endothelial cells and respond to injury quite early on following an insult,” says Liyanage.
While the work is currently pre-clinical, she says that understanding how these cells work could eventually lead to their use as a therapeutic target for diseases like heart attack and stroke.
“Within the wall of blood vessels, we’ve identified how they maintain blood vessel inflammation and how they control that,” she says.
“Inflammation in the blood vessel [wall] leads to atherosclerosis, hardening of arteries, which leads to things like heart attacks and strokes.
“[EndoMac] progenitors may be maladaptive in things like atherosclerosis, so dampening and blocking their powers would be an important implication in diseases like cancer and atherosclerosis.”
In other unpublished studies, the team has also found EndoMac progenitors in other tissues, such as the skin and in skeletal muscle.
“[In] parallel work right now, we’re thinking of potentially using these EndoMac progenitors as a tool to repair injured tissue, that may involve something along the lines of a transplant model, or it could also manifest as a way to activate the powers of these progenitors in things like wounds or ischemic tissue,” says Liyanage.
The early work indicates that EndoMac progenitors could potentially be used to boost healing in conditions like diabetes where the body has reduced capacity for it.
This initial discovery, which was achieved through nearly a decade of collaboration between researchers at SAHMRI, has been published in a paper in Nature Communications.
