Journal of Vascular Medicine & Surgery

Abstract

Tunica Arterial Adventitia: A New Exploration in Intimal Hyperplasia

Wenjuan Tang, Zhenjie Liu and Yi Si

Vascular interventions have become widely adopted for treatment of coronary and peripheral arterial atherosclerosis. Although there is increasing utilization of the new technology, restenosis still retarded the long-term outcome of the intervention. Histological studies have revealed that uninhibited neointimal cells play a vital role in the post-injury response. Among them, the majority of neointimal cell express smooth muscle cell (SMC) markers and thus, it was believed that the SMC in neighborhood migrate into the subintimal space, proliferate and secrete extracellular matrix, therefore contributing to the intimal hyperplasia. Many studies in this thematic review focus on the specifics of the injury, the cytokines and chemokines that drive SMC, and the nature of the migrated SMC. In addition, more studies documented that adventitia is an active participator instead of bystander through geneticlabeling and tracking adventitia in animal model. This brief review focuses on the recent findings of adventitia in vascular response after injury and highlights that multiplineage cells in adventitia contribute to intimal hyperplasia synergistically with SMC.