Vascular diseases await translation of blood vessels engineered from stem cells

Abstract

The discovery of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) opened new avenues for research and potential clinical applications for tissue regeneration and engineering. In particular,hiPSCs may offer a long sought solution for obtaining large numbers of autologous cells sufficient for tissue engineering. For vascular tissue engineering, several methods of generating endothelial cells or perivascular cells from hiPSCs in vitro have been reported. We review the current developments in the generation of vascular progenitor cells from hiPSCs and their functional capacity in vivo, and discuss the opportunities and challenges ahead for clinical translation and modeling vascular diseases using hiPSC-derived vascular cells with a focus on diabetes.