Totipotent stem cells could do everything ... or else nothing: the case of vascular reendothelialization

Abstract

This editorial refers to ‘Circulating endothelial progenitor cells do not contribute to regeneration of endothelium after murine arterial injury’ by M.K. Hagensen et al. , pp. 223–231, this issue. And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. (Gen. 2:22) In 1868, Goujon1 was awarded a prize of 500 francs by l'Academie de France in Paris for his presentation of very well-performed experiments ‘Sur les Proprietes Physiologiques de la Moelle des Os’ (on the Physiological Properties of Bone Marrow) in which he demonstrated the formation of bone tissue from autologous grafts of red bone marrow within skeletal muscle tissue of rabbits, chickens, and pigeons. These seminal experiments probably initiated the search for stem cells, responding to a long-lasting longing for reconstruction of damaged tissues by undifferentiated cells. It was not, however, until 1968 that this possibility was firmly reassessed2 and the recent story of stem cell research and deployment was initiated, although the term ‘mesenchymal stem cells’ was first coined by Caplan3 in 1991. This item is fully connected with the problem of repair of vascular injury, mainly caused by therapeutic interventions aimed at removing endoluminal (atherosclerotic) obstacles by angioplasty that by definition …