| Issue |
Regen Med Res
Volume 1, 2013
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 5 | |
| Number of page(s) | 5 | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1186/2050-490X-1-5 | |
| Published online | 01 November 2013 | |
Review
Cathepsins: a new culprit behind abdominal aortic aneurysm
The Key Laboratory of Remodeling-related Cardiovascular Diseases, Beijing An Zhen Hospital, Capital Medical University, Ministry of Education, Beijing Institute of Heart, Lung and Blood Vessel Diseases, Beijing 100029, China
* Correspondence: qinyanwen@vip.126.com
Received: 31 July 2013
Accepted: 19 September 2013
Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a fatal disease defined as an abdominal aortic diameter of 3.0 cm or more, where the abdominal aorta exceeds the normal diameter by more than 50%. Histopathological changes of AAA mainly include extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling at the abdominal aorta wall, but there is lack of specific drugs to treat AAA. Recent studies have reported that lysosomal cathepsins could induce vascular remodeling and AAA formation by regulating vascular inflammation, medial smooth muscle cell apoptosis, neovascularization, and protease expression. Thus, cathepsins are expected to become a new therapeutic target for AAA treatment.
Key words: Abdominal aortic aneurysm / Extracellular matrix / Cathepsins
© 2013 Wang et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.