Isolation of high-quality RNA from stented blood vessels

Stents have become a standard of care for the treatment of coronary artery disease. A series of cellular and molecular processes contribute to the vascular response following stent placement. For the purpose of local gene expression studies, metallic stent struts are usually removed from the vessel wall with forceps under a dissection microscope prior to RNA extraction. Main drawbacks of the manual dissection are that it may cause additional tissue damage and compromise the quality of RNA through prolonged tissue handling. In this technical note, we report the recovery of high-quality RNA from atherosclerotic vessels with stent struts left in situ.