Therapeutic potential of adult progenitor cells in cardiovascular disease

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases are responsible for high morbidity/mortality rates worldwide. Advances in patient care have significantly reduced deaths from acute myocardial infarction. However, the cardiac remodeling processes induced after ischaemia are responsible for a worsening in the heart condition, which in many cases ends up in failure. In the last decade, a novel therapy based on stem cell transplantation is being intensively studied in animal models and some stem cell types (i.e., skeletal myoblasts and bone marrow-derived cells) are already being tested in clinical trials. A novel stem cell population isolated from the bone marrow, termed multipotent adult progenitor cells was characterised a few years ago by its ability to differentiate, at the single cell level, towards cells derived from the three embryonic germ layers. Later on, other pluripotent cell populations have been also derived from the bone marrow. In this overview, the authors outline different stem cell sources that have been tested for their cardiovascular potential and put the regenerative potential of multipotent adult progenitor cells in animal models of acute and chronic myocardial infarction into perspective.