Therapeutic angiogenesis for ischemic diseases

The clinical consequences of peripheral arterial disease include pain on walking, pain at rest and loss of tissue integrity in the distal ischemic limbs. Although development of beneficial drugs and intervention devices do contribute to the treatment of this disease, critical limb ischemia is estimated to develop in 500 to 1,000 individuals per million per year. As angiogenic growth factors can stimulate the development of collateral arteries, a concept called "therapeutic angiogenesis" is now evaluated in the clinical fields. Recent progress in molecular biology has led to the development of gene therapy as a new strategy to treat a variety of cardiovascular diseases using angiogenic growth factors such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Therapeutic angiogenesis using angiogenic growth factors is expected to be a new treatment for patients with severe ischemic heart or peripheral arterial disease.