Pharmacologic and genetic strategies to enhance cell therapy for cardiac regeneration

Optimizing cell-based therapy for cardiac regeneration.

Long thought to be a terminally differentiated organ, recent findings suggest that the adult mammalian heart is a slowly regenerating organ1 and home to a resident population of cardiac progenitor cells (CPCs) that renew cardiomyocytes and have the potential to differentiate into multiple cell types within the myocardium.2 In spite of this, the regenerative capacity of the mammalian heart is in...

Strategies to Optimize Adult Stem Cell Therapy for Tissue Regeneration

Stem cell therapy aims to replace damaged or aged cells with healthy functioning cells in congenital defects, tissue injuries, autoimmune disorders, and neurogenic degenerative diseases. Among various types of stem cells, adult stem cells (i.e., tissue-specific stem cells) commit to becoming the functional cells from their tissue of origin. These cells are the most commonly used in cell-based t...

Clinical strategies to enhance nerve regeneration

Cardiac regeneration therapy: connections to cardiac physiology.

Without heart transplantation, a large number of patients with failing hearts worldwide face poor outcomes. By means of cardiomyocyte regeneration, cardiac regeneration therapy is emerging with great promise as a means for restoring loss of cardiac function. However, the limited success of clinical trials using bone marrow-derived cells and myoblasts with heterogeneous constituents, transplante...

Cardiac tissue engineering and regeneration using cell-based therapy

Stem cell therapy and tissue engineering represent a forefront of current research in the treatment of heart disease. With these technologies, advancements are being made into therapies for acute ischemic myocardial injury and chronic, otherwise nonreversible, myocardial failure. The current clinical management of cardiac ischemia deals with reestablishing perfusion to the heart but not dealing...