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Have you ever wondered how your cells react when you cut your finger?

Cells talk to one another, blood vessels regrow, and the immune system sends out repair crews to rebuild what was lost. Two new studies reveal exciting ways this process — called cellular reprogramming — can be guided to improve healing, fight inflammation, and even restore circulation in diseases where blood flow is damaged.

What is Cellular Reprogramming?

Cellular reprogramming refers to the ability of cells to change their identity or activity in response to signals from the environment. It’s how the body converts “on-the-scene” immune cells or quiet blood vessel cells into active repair units. This flexibility allows us to heal from injury, but in disease it can go awry, fueling chronic inflammation or cancer growth.

Reprogramming the Blood Vessels: The Metabolism of Angiogenesis

A 2025 review published in the Journal of Advanced Research, explores how endothelial cells — the thin layer of cells lining our blood vessels — rely on metabolic reprogramming to form new vessels, a process known as angiogenesis.

During angiogenesis, endothelial cells rely heavily on glycolysis to meet their energy demands, even when oxygen is available. Although glycolysis is typically the step before mitochondrial energy production, these cells divert much of the resulting pyruvate away from the TCA cycle and instead generate ATP directly through rapid glycolysis.

This metabolic strategy allows endothelial cells to grow and migrate efficiently in low-oxygen environments, such as healing wounds or ischemic tissue, while limiting oxidative stress and preserving oxygen for surrounding cells. Rather than maximizing energy yield, endothelial cells prioritize speed, flexibility, and resilience during blood vessel formation.

Key discoveries include:

• Endothelial cells adjust their metabolism — using glucose, fatty acids, and amino acids — to decide when to stay quiet or when to sprout new blood vessels.

• Metabolic imbalance fuels disease: Too much glycolysis or fatty acid metabolism can lead to chaotic, leaky blood vessels in cancer or diabetes.

• Targeting metabolism could heal or halt disease: Drugs that gently shift these metabolic pathways might one day improve blood flow in ischemic tissue or slow tumor growth by cutting off their blood supply.

Reprogramming the Immune System: Electric Fields and Healing

A 2025 study in Cell Reports Physical Science by researchers at Trinity College Dublin shows that electricity can reprogram human immune cells.

Scientists applied mild electrical pulses to macrophages — the immune cells that clean up wounds and direct tissue repair. Within an hour, these cells transformed from a pro-inflammatory (damage-clearing) type to a pro-healing one that encourages new blood vessel growth and reduces inflammation.

Highlights of the study:

• Electrically stimulated macrophages increased the expression of genes like VEGF and TGF-β, which help build new blood vessels and repair tissue.

• They reduced inflammatory molecules such as IL-6 and IL-8, curbing the destructive side of inflammation.

• These reprogrammed macrophages even enhanced vessel formation in lab models, helping endothelial cells weave together new capillary networks.

This discovery opens the door to “electro-healing” — therapies that use gentle electrical fields to awaken our own repair cells instead of relying on drugs or genetic engineering.

Why it Matters

Together, these studies highlight a powerful idea: healing and disease are not fixed states — they depend on how our cells are programmed. By steering cellular metabolism or applying bioelectric cues, scientists can help the body restore balance:

• In chronic wounds: Electric stimulation could boost macrophage-driven healing.

• In heart disease or diabetes: Metabolic reprogramming could promote stable vessel growth and oxygen delivery.

• In cancer: The same tools might be reversed to block excessive vessel formation and starve tumors.

Our cells are remarkably adaptable. The challenge and the promise lies in learning how to nudge them in the right direction. Whether through metabolic fine-tuning or bioelectrical modulation, the future of medicine may depend less on replacing damaged tissues and more on teaching our existing cells how to heal themselves.

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Best wishes,
- The Angiogenesis Foundation

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