Cell therapy for acute myocardial infarction: where are we heading?

摘要: Repair of the heart is an old dream of physicians caring for patients with myocardial infarction. Despite mechanical reperfusion and advances in pharmacotherapy, however, the repair of infarcted myocardium mainly by endogenous repair has not been achieved, and healing remains as being mainly by scar formation. In this context, the emerging concept of adult stem-cell plasticity has generated great excitement among molecular and clinical cardiologists.Stem cells are undifferentiated cells capable of self-replication, transformation into dedicated progenitor cells, and differentiation into specialized progeny. Bone marrow is a rich source of various stem-cell and progenitor-cell populations, including, hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, mesenchymal stem cells, and endothelial progenitor cells. The concept of stem-cell plasticity suggests that stem cells can transdifferentiate into distinct mature phenotypes when …