Heart HealthHow Aging Turns Artery Cells Tumor-Like — and What to Do About It
Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease kills millions despite modern treatments. A new review reveals that vascular smooth muscle cells inside arterial plaques undergo a striking transformation — accumulating DNA damage, reprogramming their epigenetics, expanding as clones, and shifting into multiple cell identities, all in ways that eerily resemble cancer biology. Vascular aging is the key driver, impairing DNA repair, triggering cellular senescence, and remodeling the plaque's local environment. The authors propose three therapeutic strategies: restoring DNA damage response machinery, nudging smooth muscle cells toward protective plaque-stabilizing states, and blocking the abnormal tiny blood vessels that grow inside dangerous plaques. Most evidence is still preclinical, but the framework offers a fresh precision-medicine lens for a disease that remains a leading cause of death worldwide.
