Abstract

Therapeutic angiogenesis is an important means to salvage tissues against severe ischemic diseases in patients with no option for other vascular intervention. A number of recent studies implicated potentials of cell-based therapeutic angiogenesis using autologous bone marrow mononuclear cells, CD34+ cells, peripheral blood mononuclear cells, and so on. Subcutaneous adipose tissues can be harvested by relatively easy methods. Recent studies indicated that adipose tissues contain progenitor cells or regenerative cells that can give rise to several mesenchymal lineages. Moreover, these progenitor cells can release multiple angiogenic growth factors and cytokines/chomokines including vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), hypatocyte growth factor (HGF) and chemokine stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1). The combination of these biological properties of adipose-derived regenerative cells (ADRCs) implicates that autologous adipose tissue will be a useful cell source for therapeutic angiogenesis in the next generation.