In a finding which may eventually lead to ways to stimulate wound healing or fight tumor growth, a group of Harvard researchers has discovered the glue that sticks blood cells together to form young blood vessels.

Joyce E. Bischoff, assistant professor of cellular and molecular physiology at the Medical School, reported in Nature two weeks ago that a protein known as E-selectin plays a role in binding blood cells together to form the smallest blood vessels, capillaries.

Blood vessels are formed when individual blood cells stick together. Bischoff and her colleagues at the Children's Hospital found that when certain sugary structures on the surface of blood cells were prevented from binding, the cells failed to adhere to each other.

The gluey sugars were known to bind to a family of proteins called selectins, which had already been identified as the substances that connect white blood cells to blood vessel walls.

Bischoff said that understanding young blood vessel formation, or angiogenesis, could lead to improved clinical techniques to aid in wound healing or limit tumor growth, since tumors grow by inducing capillary formation in the surrounding tissue.

"I don't think the actual finding directly affects drug development," said Bischoff, "but the more we know about capillary formation, the more it might lead to drugs that might help or inhibit that process, which are both needed."