Dual role for exosome-coated stent

Angioplasty opens blocked arteries and can involve placing a metal stent to reinforce arterial walls and prevent them from collapsing once the blockage is removed. According to NC State, the stent's placement usually causes some injury to the blood vessel wall, which stimulates smooth muscle cells to proliferate and migrate to the site to repair the injury. This leads to restenosis, which is a re-narrowing of the blood vessel previously opened by angioplasty.

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"The inflammatory response that stents cause can decrease their benefit," Ke Cheng, corresponding author of the research, said in a statement. "Ideally, if we could stop smooth muscle cells from over-reacting and proliferating, but recruit endothelial cells to cover the stent, it would mitigate the inflammatory response and prevent restenosis."

Current drug-eluting stents are coated with drugs that discourage cell proliferation, but these anti-proliferative drugs also delay stent coverage by endothelial cells, which are the cells healthcare providers want to coat the stent with.