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Cell‐based therapies for cardiac disease: a cellular therapist's perspective
Author(s) -
Young Pampee P.,
Schäfer Richard
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
transfusion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.045
H-Index - 132
eISSN - 1537-2995
pISSN - 0041-1132
DOI - 10.1111/trf.12826
Subject(s) - medicine , mesenchymal stem cell , cell therapy , stem cell , myocardial infarction , stem cell therapy , progenitor cell , clinical trial , heart failure , transplantation , stromal cell , disease , regeneration (biology) , cardiology , bioinformatics , intensive care medicine , pathology , biology , microbiology and biotechnology
Cell‐based therapy is an exciting, promising, and a developing new treatment for cardiac diseases. Stem cell–based therapies have the potential to fundamentally transform the treatment of ischemic cardiac injury and heart failure by achieving what would have been unthinkable only a few years ago—the H oly G rail of myocardial regeneration. Recent therapeutic approaches involve bone marrow ( BM )‐derived mononuclear cells and their subsets such as mesenchymal stem/stromal cells ( MSC s), endothelial progenitor cells as well as adipose tissue–derived MSC s, cardiac tissue–derived stem cells, and cell combinations. Clinical trials employing these cells have demonstrated that cellular therapy is feasible and safe. Regarding delivery methods, the safety of catheter‐based, transendocardial and ‐epicardial stem cell injection has been established. However, the results, while variable, suggest rather modest clinical efficacy overall in both heart failure and ischemic heart disease, such as in acute myocardial infarction. Future studies will focus on determining the most efficacious cell type(s) and/or cell combinations and the most reasonable indications and optimal timing of transplantation, as well as the mechanisms underlying their therapeutic effects. We will review and summarize the clinical trial results to date. In addition, we discuss challenges and operational issues in cell processing for cardiac applications.