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Stem Cell Therapy for Lymphedema

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Stem Cell Therapy for Vascular Diseases

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Abstract

Lymphedema is a chronic disease with significant morbidity to many patients. Regenerative medicine, cell therapies in particular, has the potential to repair broken physiologic processes and restore health. Vascular regeneration of small vessels is particularly well suited to cellular therapies. This is important because the standard treatment of lymphedema has been frustrated by limited symptom relief, leading many patients to be managed but not cured. Recently, specific molecular mediators have been identified that can be targeted pharmacologically, and it is now known that lymphedema can be reversed, even in the setting of long-standing and/or severe disease. Cell therapies hold promise therapeutically because they can correct deranged pathways in a multi-modal fashion, and this may provide sustained (and possibly complete) regeneration through the recruitment of native reparative cells. This chapter outlines the current symptom-management strategies, the contemporary role of operative therapies in this patient population, and then summarizes existing regenerative medicine approaches being developed to treat lymphedema.

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Acknowledgments

Dr. Brewster’s data and time on this chapter was supported in part by his research funding from the NIH and VA; NHLBI R01HL143348; VABLRD IO1BX004707; and VARRD I21RX003188. The authors are grateful to the academic support of Emory University’s Department of Surgery, including our leadership, Drs. John F. Sweeney, Grant Carlson, and Will Jordan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Emory University, Department of Surgery, Vascular Surgery and Endovascular Therapy, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Dylan McLaughlin & Luke Brewster

  2. Emory University, Department of Surgery, Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Angela Cheng

  3. Atlanta VA Medical Center, Surgical and Research Services, Decatur, GA, USA

    Luke Brewster

  4. Georgia Institute of Technology, Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Luke Brewster

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  1. Dylan McLaughlin
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  2. Angela Cheng
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Correspondence to Luke Brewster .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Surgery, Vascular Surgery Section, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

    Tulio Pinho Navarro

  2. Postgraduate Program in Sciences Applied to Surgery, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

    Lara Lellis Navarro Minchillo Lopes

  3. Vascular Biology and Therapeutics Program and the Departments of Surgery and Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    Alan Dardik

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McLaughlin, D., Cheng, A., Brewster, L. (2021). Stem Cell Therapy for Lymphedema. In: Navarro, T.P., Minchillo Lopes, L.L.N., Dardik, A. (eds) Stem Cell Therapy for Vascular Diseases. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56954-9_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56954-9_19

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