JCI online early table of contents: May 8, 2008

TITLE: Mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias and sudden death in transgenic rabbits with long QT syndrome

AUTHOR CONTACT:
Gideon Koren
Rhode Island Hospital, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
Phone: (401) 444-0392; Fax: (401) 444-4061; E-mail: .

View the PDF of this article at: https://www.the-jci.org/article.php?id=33578

VASCULAR BIOLOGY: It’s a fix: the protein p21Cip1 helps repair damaged blood vessels

New insight into the molecular mechanisms controlling the repair of damaged blood vessels has been provided by studies in mice by Manfred Boehm and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda.

The repair of a damaged blood vessel involves both cells that reside in the blood vessel wall and inflammatory cells that infiltrate the blood vessel wall after it has been damaged. In this study, the repair of damaged arteries was found to be defective in mice lacking the protein p21Cip1. Specifically, smooth muscle cells residing in the wall of the artery were found to proliferate excessively and the number of inflammatory cells infiltrating the wall of the damaged artery was markedly greater than in normal mice. These effects were associated with increased production of the soluble factor SDF-1 by cells in the artery wall. Further analysis indicated that p21Cip1 inhibits a signaling molecule important for inducing SDF-1 production. These data indicate that p21Cip1 controls both the proliferation of cells in the wall of a damaged artery and their production of SDF-1, which attracts inflammatory cells because they express the molecule to which SDF-1 binds: CXCR4. Further, as the blood vessel repair seems to go awry in the disease of the arteries known as atherosclerosis (which causes narrowing of the arteries and heart attacks), the authors suggest that p21Cip1 and SDF-1 might have a pivotal role in the development of this disease.

TITLE: p21Cip1 modulates arterial wound repair through the stromal cell–derived factor-1/CXCR4 axis in mice

AUTHOR CONTACT:
Manfred Boehm
National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
Phone: (301) 435-7211; Fax: (301) 451-7090; E-mail: .

View the PDF of this article at: https://www.the-jci.org/article.php?id=31244

PHYSIOLOGY: Two receptors affecting blood pressure are inextricably linked