The editor's roundtable: advances in stem cell therapy for treatment of cardiovascular disease.

The first clinical trials of stem cell (SC) treatment for cardiac disease in humans, using autologous bone marrow cell transplantation in patients with severe chronic heart failure (HF), were reported in 2002 (using the intracoronary injection route) and in 2003 (using the intramyocardial injection route). Since those initial reports, numerous additional clinical SC trials have been conducted in the treatment of cardiac disease, with approximately 30 trials under way in the United States in 2012. In addition to bone marrow–derived hematopoietic SCs, subsequent clinical trials have used mesenchymal SCs, endothelial progenitor cells, skeletal myoblasts, induced pluripotent SCs (and derivatives), and cardiac-resident SCs. Currently, the 3 main indications for SC treatment in patients with heart disease are chronic ischemic HF, acute myocardial infarction, and idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy. On the basis of trials over the past decade, “cell herapy may transform the treatment of acute and chronic eart disease, with an anticipated impact rivaling the results