Source: The First Affiliated Hospital
Edited by: Tan Rongyu, Wang Dongmei

Recently, a research paper by Professor Tao Jun’s team from the Department of Hypertension and Vascular Disease of the First Affiliated Hospital at Sun Yat-sen University, which is entitled “Bimodal Imaging-visible Nanomedicine Integrating CXCR4 and VEGFa Genes Directs Synergistic Reendothelialization of Endothelial Progenitor Cells”, has been published in the internationally renowned academic journal Advanced Science.

Cardiovascular diseases have become the number one killer of the health in China. Vascular endothelial injury is the initial link and the basis of comorbidities. Therefore, maintaining vascular homeostasis is a key measure for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Stem cell-based therapy has been a continuous hot issue all over the world. However, traditional stem cell transplantation has many defects such as weak homing ability, proliferation and differentiation incapacity, and lack of evidence of in vivo repair after transplantation, which seriously impedes its treatment strategy formation and clinical application.
In order to solve the two major challenges in stem cell regenerative therapy for repairing vascular damage, Professor Tao Jun’s team has developed a multifunctional nanocarrier, which can safely and efficiently deliver the homing genes (CXCR4) and proliferation and differentiation genes (VEGF) to improve the ability of homing and differentiation of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) after transplantation. To integrate the advantages of magnetic resonance imaging and optical imaging, they further construct a multifunctional imaging probe, encapsulating magnetic resonance imaging agent and living fluorescent dye to realize dynamic monitoring of the entire biological process of vascular damage repair after EPCs transplantation. This research is the first to explore unique cell therapy and new strategies for maintaining vascular homeostasis, providing innovative technology and application basis for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases with stem cell regeneration therapy.

The corresponding authors of the paper are Associate Professor Xia Wenhao, Professor Tao Jun, and Professor Shuai Xintao. The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The team of Professor Shen Jun from Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital provided powerful support in the research of vascular molecular imaging.

Link to the paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.202001657