High blood pressure treatable with genetic engineering?

Hypertension with genetic engineering

In the future, high blood pressure can be treated with genetic engineering skin grafts American and German researchers have successfully regulated the blood pressure in mice with genetically engineered skin grafts.

Scientists at the NIH, the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, Giessen and Marburg Universities and Japanese Keio University published their sensational study in the well-known US „Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences“.

However, the two transplanted pieces were grown from human skin. In this genes were inserted, which once contained a hypotensive hormone (atrial Natriuretisches peptide ANP) and once hormones, with which one can regulate the release of the hypotensive ANP. The hormone is normally secreted when there is an overstretching of the wall of the atrium at the heart. Then the organism tries to reduce the pressure of the blood here, what u.a. happening through the ANP.

Researchers led by Jean-Philippe Therrien, Jonathan Vogel and Wolfgang Pfützner were able to keep the blood pressure of the experimental mice constant with their genetically modified skin grafts, even if they were given very saline food (which would normally increase the blood pressure). Already in 2008, the three had in the trade magazine „Toxicologic Pathology“ published an article about her treatment approach and now delivered the proof.

It is once revolutionary that genetically engineered skin grafts produce hormones and, secondly, that it seems possible in the future to treat hypertension and possibly other internal or systemic diseases by transplanting genetically modified skin. This could be a useful alternative for people whose cause of the disease is not clear or treatable and who need to take medications on a permanent basis.
The question now is whether these results can be applied to humans. If one extrapolates the results on our organism, then the scientists estimate, would have at the time that skin graft approximately as large as a DIN A5 sheet be. (Thorsten Fischer Naturopathic Osteopathy, 11.01.2010)

Additional information

Publication of the study „A gene therapy approach for long-term normalization of blood pressure in hypertensive mice by ANP-secreting human skin grafts“ in proceedings

Article on the treatment approach in Toxicologic Pathology