There is no consensus regarding the optimal dose of stem cells or the optimal route of administration for the treatment of acute myocardial infarction. Bone marrow cells, containing hematopoietic and mesenchymal stem cells, in doses of 0.5 x 10(6) to >30 x 10(6) have been directly injected into the myocardium or into coronary arteries or infused intravenously in subjects with myocardial infarctions to reduce infarct size and improve heart function. Therefore, we determined the specific effects of different doses of human umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells (HUCBC), which contain hematopoietic and mesenchymal stem cells, on infarct size. In order to determine the optimal technique for stem cell administration, HUCBC were injected directly into the myocardium (IM), or into the LV cavity with the ascending aorta transiently clamped to facilitate coronary artery perfusion (IA), or injected intravenously (IV) in rats 1-2 h after the left anterior coronary artery was permanently ligated. Immune suppressive therapy was not given to any rat. One month later, the infarct size in control rat hearts treated with only Isolyte averaged 23.7 +/- 1.7% of the LV muscle area. Intramyocardial injection of HUCBC reduced the infarct size by 71% with 0.5 x 10(6) HUCBC and by 93% with 4 x 10(6) HUCBC in comparison with the controls (p < 0.001). Intracoronary injection reduced the infarction size by 47% with 0.5 x 10(6) HUCBC and by 80% with 4 x 10(6) HUCBC (p < 0.001), and IV HUCBC reduced infarct size by 51% with 0.5 x 10(6) and by 75-77% with 16-32 million HUCBC (p < 0.001) in comparison with control hearts. With 4 x 10(6) HUCBC, infarction size was 65% smaller with IM HUCBC than with IA HUCBC and 78% smaller than with IV HUCBC (p < 0.05). Nevertheless, IM, IA, and IV HUCBC all produced significant reductions in infarct size in comparison with Isolyte-treated infarcted hearts without requirements for host immune suppression. The present experiments demonstrate that the optimal dose of HUCBC for reduction of infarct size in the rat is 4 x 10(6) IM, 4 x 10(6) IA, and 16 x 10(6) IV, and that the IM injection of HUCBC is the most effective technique for reduction in infarct size.

We are investigating the effects of human umbilical cord blood mononuclear progenitor cells (HUCBC) for the treatment of acute myocardial infarction because human cord blood is a readily available and an abundant source of primitive cells that may be beneficial in myocardial repair. However, there is currently no scientific consensus on precisely when to inject stem/progenitor cells for the optimal treatment of acute myocardial infarction. We used an in vitro assay to determine the attraction of infarcted rat myocardium at 1, 2, 2.5, 3, 6, 12,24, 48, and 96 h after left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) occlusion from 45 rats for HUCBC in order to determine the optimal time to transplant HUCBC after myocardial infarction. Our assay is based on the migration of fluorescent DAPI-labeled HUCBC from wells in an upper chamber of a modified Boyden apparatus through a semiporous polycarbonate membrane into wells in a lower chamber that contain either normal or infarcted myocardium. DAPI-labeled HUCBC (100,000) were placed in each of the separate wells above the membrane that corresponded to normal or infarct homogenate in the lower wells. The greatest HUCBC migration to infarcted myocardium occurred at 2 h and 24 h after LAD occlusion in comparison with normal controls. A total of 76,331 ± 3384 HUCBC migrated to infarcted myocardium at 2 h and 69,911 ± 2732 at 24 h after LAD occlusion (both p < 0.001) and significantly exceeded HUCBC migration to normal heart homogenate. The HUCBC migration remained greatest at 2 and 24 h after LAD occlusion when the number of migrated cells was adjusted for the size of each myocardial infarction. Injection of 10 6 HUCBC in saline into infarcted myocardium of non immunosuppressed rats within 2 h (n = 10) or at 24 h (n = 5) after LAD occlusion resulted in infarction sizes 1 month later of 6.4 ± 0.01% and 8.4 ± 0.02% of the total left ventricular muscle area, respectively, in comparison with infarction sizes of 24.5 ± 0.02% (n = 10) in infarcted rat hearts treated with only saline (p < 0.005). Acute myocardial infarction in rats treated with only saline increased the myocardial concentration of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) from 6.9 ± 0.8% to 51.3 ± 4.6%, monocyte/macrophage chemoattractant protein (MCP-1) from 10.5 ± 1.1% to 39.2 ± 2.0%, monocyte inflammatory protein (MIP) from 10.6 ± 1.6% to 23.1 ± 1.5%, and interferon-γ (INF-γ) from 8.9 ± 0.3% to 25.0 ± 1.7% between 2 and 12 h after coronary occlusion in comparison with known controls (all p < 0.001). In contrast, the myocardial concentrations of these cytokines in rat hearts treated with HUCBC did not significantly change from the controls at 2, 6, 12, and 24 h after coronary occlusion. The present investigations suggest that infarcted myocardium significantly attracts HUCBC, that HUCBC can substantially reduce myocardial infarction size, and that HUCBC can limit the expression of TNF-α, MCP-1, MIP, and INF-γ in acutely infarcted myocardium.