Mesenchymal stem cells and vascular regeneration

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>In recent years, <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">MSC</jats:styled-content>s have emerged as a promising therapeutic cell type in regenerative medicine. They hold great promise for treating cardiovascular diseases, such as myocardial infarction and limb ischemia. <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">MSC</jats:styled-content>s may be utilized in both cell‐based therapy and vascular graft engineering to restore vascular function, thereby providing therapeutic benefits to patients. The efficacy of <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">MSC</jats:styled-content>s lies in their multipotent differentiation ability toward vascular smooth muscle cells, endothelial cells and other cell types, as well as their capacity to secrete various trophic factors, which are potent in promoting angiogenesis, inhibiting apoptosis and modulating immunoreaction. Increasing our understanding of the mechanisms of <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">MSC</jats:styled-content> involvement in vascular regeneration will be beneficial in boosting present therapeutic approaches and developing novel ones to treat cardiovascular diseases. In this review, we aim to summarize current progress in characterizing the in vivo identity of <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">MSC</jats:styled-content>s, to discuss mechanisms involved in cell‐based therapy utilizing <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">MSC</jats:styled-content>s, and to explore current and future strategies for vascular regeneration.</jats:p>