Salt Lake City -- University of Utah researchers have taken a potentially powerful new therapy for treating diabetes, peripheral vascular disease, and other illnesses out of the test tube and into animals by demonstrating it restores nerve and blood vessel growth in mice.

The research has particularly important implications for the estimated 21 million Americans with diabetes, a disease that damages both nerves and blood vessels.

The therapy involves netrins, a family of proteins that promotes nerve development. In a study to be published this week in the journal Science Express, the Utah researchers and colleagues from other universities showed netrins not only accelerated blood vessel growth in ischemic mice (those with constricted blood flow) but they also restored blood vessel and nerve growth in diabetic mice. Dean Y. Li, M.D., Ph.D., a cardiologist and associate professor of internal medicine at the University's School of Medicine, is the study's corresponding author.

"We now have a (growth) factor that attracts both blood vessels and nerves--that's why it's unique for diabetes," Li said. "This demonstrates that netrins are critical for development and may be important as a new therapy."

Li and fellow researchers from the University of Utah and Stanford already had shown Netrin-1, a member of the netrins family, promotes blood vessel growth in laboratory cultures. But, until now, it had not been demonstrated that netrins work in animals.

The researchers tested netrins and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a gene-based therapy in Phase 2 clinical trials, in mice. They used the same method to inject netrins and VEGF. In the mice whose blood circulation was decreased by peripheral vascular disease, the researchers found netrins and VEGF promoted blood vessel growth equally well. But in the diabetic mice, netrins proved markedly better at promoting blood vessel and nerve growth t
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Contact: Phil Sahm
phil.sahm@hsc.utah.edu
801-581-2517
University of Utah Health Sciences Center
30-Jun-2006