RATIONALE Ixmyelocel-T is associated with a wide range of biological activities relevant to tissue repair and regeneration. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the safety and efficacy of ixmyelocel-T in 2 prospective randomized phase 2A Trials administered via minithoracotomy or intramyocardial catheter injections in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) stratified by ischemic or nonischemic status. ...

BACKGROUND Coronary artery perforation associated to cardiac tamponade is an uncommon life-threatening complication of percutaneous coronary intervention, and the occurrence of subepicardial or intramyocardial hematoma without hemopericardium is even rarer. CLINICAL CASE We describe the case of a 72 year-old woman with a subepicardial hematoma after percutaneous coronary intervention, who req...

A 48-year-old man from West Africa was evaluated for dyspnea. Echocardiography showed an echolucent mass at the left ventricular apex surrounded by a dense ridge of tissue, suggesting endomyocardial fibrosis (EMF). Doppler echocardiography showed restrictive hemodynamics and intramyocardial coronary blood flow at the hypertrophied apex, suggesting apical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (ApHCM) with...

BACKGROUND The hallmarks of diabetic cardiomyopathy are cardiac oxidative stress, intramyocardial inflammation, cardiac fibrosis, and cardiac apoptosis. Given the antioxidative, antiinflammatory, and antiapoptotic potential of high-density lipoprotein (HDL), we evaluated the hypothesis that increased HDL via gene transfer (GT) with human apolipoprotein (apo) A-I, the principal apolipoprotein of...

Aging is associated with shifts in autocrine and paracrine pathways in the cardiac vasculature that may contribute to the risk of cardiovascular disease in older persons. To elucidate the molecular basis of these changes in vivo, phage-display biopanning of 3- and 18-mo-old mouse hearts was performed that identified peptide epitopes with homology to brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in o...

AIMS Standardization of stem cell therapy requires application of appropriate methods to evaluate safety and efficacy, including long-term pharmacovigilance. To accomplish this objective, a long-term registry programme was installed. METHODS AND RESULTS We analysed 150 patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy, who received intramyocardial CD133+ bone marrow mononuclear stem cell treatment combin...

This study examined the effects of localized intramyocardial injections of hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) naked DNA plasmid on the progression of left ventricular (LV) dysfunction and remodeling in dogs with moderate heart failure (HF). Twenty-one dogs with intracoronary microembolization-induced HF [LV ejection fraction (EF) = 35-40%] were randomized into three treatment groups, namely, high-d...