This YouTube lecture (by Joy Kong, MD) explains stem cell behavior: cells sense injury/inflammation signals, migrate through blood vessels toward the strongest signal, exit into local tissue, and coordinate repair/regeneration. The speaker argues for delivering cells into the vasculature so they can home to signals and perform their therapeutic functions.
If they sense something bad somewhere, they're going to squeeze themselves into the blood vessels, such as inflammation or injury. So they're going to swim upstream to find the signal, and then they're going to get out of the blood vessel because the signal is strongest over there. They're going to get to local tissue and start to coordinate this repair regeneration. That's what I'm counting on. If I put the cells, instead of letting them sitting outside of the blood vessels and, you know, try to listen to what the signals are, I put them in the blood vessels so they can do what they were going to do anyhow, which is to find the signal and then get out and do their work.
