A model platform for studies of the microbiome on vascular injury response

Abstract

The physiologic process of the vascular response to injury is enormously variable. When the response includes substantial intimal proliferation, it poses the severe practical problem of flow-limiting obstruction as a consequence of manipulation of vessels during surgical and percutaneous interventional vascular procedures. Finding solutions to this problem requires the development of a thorough understanding of the mechanisms of the injury response that result in pathologic intimal thickening. This has proved to be challenging, and our current clinical methods for managing neointimal hyperplasia (NIH) are crude at best.