Cardiac FDG-PET: a straight forward tool with high potential

Brunner and colleagues have recently introduced the concept of ‘dual stem cell therapy’ for the treatment of acute myocardial infarction (AMI),1,2 which is based on a pharmacological regimen consisting of two components: 1. Cells are mobilized from the bone marrow into peripheral blood by application of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF).2. Homing of these mobilized cells into the myocardium is enhanced by administration of sitagliptin.The latter component is based on the fact that homing into ischaemic tissue is mediated by stromal cell-derived factor (SDF)-1 expression in the myocardium which binds to its corresponding receptor CXCR-4 on circulating stem cells.2 SDF-1 is usually inactivated by enzymatic cleavage via dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP-IV).3 Hence, pharmacological inhibition of DPP-IV stabilizes SDF-1 and enhances stem cell homing into ischaemic myocardium.Brunner's group has shown that combined treatment of AMI in mice with G-CSF and sitagliptin leads to a significant increase in both survival and cardiac function. These beneficial effects were attributed to increased cardiac homing of bone marrow-derived stem cells which induced neovascularization and reduced cardiac remodelling as well as apoptosis.2The study of Gross et al. 4 was now performed to substantiate the possible effects of this therapeutic concept on cardiac remodelling after AMI by use of 18F-FDG-based micro-PET.Therefore, …