Resistance arteries - small but mighty vessels

Resistance arteries are small but powerful blood vessels. Measuring just one millimeter in diameter, or less, these powerful structures generate 90% of all total peripheral resistance. In the body, this function is critical to the control and maintenance of blood flow.

We use these vessels at REPROCELL to measure the potential effect of novel drugs on blood pressure in human tissues. Sometimes we look at whether drugs reduce blood pressure through the dilation of these vessels, and other times, we are checking whether a drug may inadvertently be causing hypertension via their contraction. The benefit of using human resistance vessels is that we can obtain a more accurate picture of how these drugs will behave when they are tested in human subjects.

However, many researchers are still reliant on animal alternatives, such as the isolated rat aorta, because experiments using human tissue require more ethical considerations than animal models. Human tissues can be difficult to access without appropriate experience and support, which is why we specialize in these types of models at REPROCELL. If you are interested in finding out more, I discuss why isolated artery models are useful, how the rat aorta is used to measure vascular tone, and what species differences may exist between human and rat models in my latest blog post.