Cardiac repair and regeneration: the Rubik’s cube of cell therapy for heart

dmm.biologists.org 344 The clinical problem Ischemic and non-ischemic cardiomyopathies eventually lead to left ventricular dysfunction and heart failure. Heart failure impedes quality of life, decreases life expectancy and increases medical costs dramatically, and thus constitutes a major health problem (McMurray and Pfeffer, 2005). As the population ages, the prevalence of heart failure will increase. Current therapy provides some survival benefit and improvement of symptoms, but cannot reverse the condition of cardiac tissue from a diseased to a healthy state. Recent developments in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine may offer ways to manage heart failure by replacing damaged or lost cardiac muscle with healthy tissue, and thus improve the quality of life and survival in patients with various cardiomyopathies.