Endothelial Progenitor Cells and Their Application in Tissue Engineering

Abstract: Vascular tissue engineering and neovascularization of engineering tissue grafts have come under limitation from poor proliferating ability and activity of endothelial cells. Endothelial progenitor cell (EPC) is a kind of directional cell that is able to differentiate into mature endothelial cell. Postnatally， EPCs are mainly in bone marrow， which can be released to peripheral blood and contribute to repair of injured vascular endothelium and neovascularization of ischemic tissue. In this paper， the biological specialities of EPC， such as its origin， distributing， characterization， mobilization， differentiation， homing， isolation， culture and identification， and it's application in tissue engineering is reviewed， as well as existed problems and research direction at present in this field are pointed out.

CSTR: 32200.14.cjcb.2006.03.0001