Current Concepts in Stem Cell Therapy for Cardiovascular Diseases: What We Know and Don't Know

Abstract

Medical therapies and mechanical interventions for the treatment of myocardial infarction (MI) and ischemic heart failure have seen great progress. However, current therapies only slow the progression to heart failure, but do not stimulate regeneration to recover the loss of functional myocytes. Stem cell-based therapy is a novel modality that can potentially be used for the treatment of ischemic cardiac injury and heart failure wherein cardiac tissue is regenerated thereby improving cardiac function and reducing the morbidity and mortality of patients. Many preclinical and clinical trials have employed various types of stem cells including bone marrow-derived mononuclear cells, skeletal myoblasts, resident cardiac stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells, and endothelial progenitor cells, and these studies have suggested great potential for the clinical application of stem cell therapy for cardiac disease. Here we will review and summarize the current evidence indicating the potential of stem cell therapy, focusing on the clinical trials conducted to date. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

New Horizons in Stem Cell Research

“…Stem cellbased therapy is a novel modality that may be useful for the treatment of ischemic cardiac injury and heart failure wherein cardiac tissue can be regenerated to improve cardiac function, thus reducing morbidity and mortality for patients. Jeon will review and summarize the current evidence indicating the potential of stem cell therapy, focusing on the clinical trials conducted to date [6]. Lately it has been proven that the satellite cell is capable of initiating muscle regeneration and is capable of self-renewal showing that its role is as a true muscle stem cell.…”