SEE PAGE 14 O ne-half of patients with heart failure (HF) have a preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), and there is no proven effective treatment (1). The traditional thinking has been that left ventricular (LV) diastolic dysfunction caused by hypertensive ventricular remodeling causes the clinical syndrome of HFpEF. More recent data suggest that it is not so simple, and that other systemic proc...

BACKGROUND The regenerative potential of cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs) for ischemic heart disease has been demonstrated in mice, rats, pigs, and a recently completed clinical trial (CADUCEUS). CDCs are CD105(+) stromal cells of intrinsic cardiac origin, but the antigenic characteristics of the active fraction remain to be defined. CDCs contain a small minority of c-kit(+) cells, which have ...

Stem cells (embryonic stem cells, somatic stem cells such as neural stem cells, and cardiac stem cells) and cancer cells are known to aggregate and form spheroid structures. This behavior is common in undifferentiated cells and may be necessary for adapting to certain conditions such as low-oxygen levels or to maintain undifferentiated status in microenvironments including stem cell niches. In ...

background: the aim of this study was optimization of the polyfect gene delivery method of pcdna3.1 expression vector transfected with the mouse pdx-1 gene in three different kinds of mesenchymal stem cells and hepa cells as well as comparison of transfection efficiency leading to expression of the mentioned gene in the cell types used. materials and methods: rat bone marrow-derived mesenchymal...

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is still one of the main causes of death in the world, despite significant advances in clinical treatments. Stem cell transplantation methods have the potential to improve cardiac function and patients' outcome following heart attack, but optimal cell types, cell preparation methods and cell delivery routes are yet to be developed. Mammalian hearts contain a small f...