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Stem-cell therapy for cardiac disease

Nature volume 451, pages 937–942 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Heart failure is the leading cause of death worldwide, and current therapies only delay progression of the disease. Laboratory experiments and recent clinical trials suggest that cell-based therapies can improve cardiac function, and the implications of this for cardiac regeneration are causing great excitement. Bone-marrow-derived progenitor cells and other progenitor cells can differentiate into vascular cell types, restoring blood flow. More recently, resident cardiac stem cells have been shown to differentiate into multiple cell types present in the heart, including cardiac muscle cells, indicating that the heart is not terminally differentiated. These new findings have stimulated optimism that the progression of heart failure can be prevented or even reversed with cell-based therapy.

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Figure 1: Mechanisms of, and potential barriers to, endogenous cardiac regeneration.
Figure 2: Many cell types and mechanisms have been proposed for cardiac therapy.
Figure 3: Challenges to stem-cell therapy for cardiac disease.

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Acknowledgements

V.F.M.S. was supported by a PhD fellowship of the Research Foundation — Flanders (FWO) and by a Belgian American Educational Foundation research fellowship. R.T.L. was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health. The authors thank J. A. Epstein, P. Menasche and K. B. Margulies for helpful comments.

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  1. Cardiovascular Division, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Partners Research Facility, 65 Landsdowne Street, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    Vincent F. M. Segers & Richard T. Lee

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Correspondence should be addressed to R.T.L. (rlee@partners.org).

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Segers, V., Lee, R. Stem-cell therapy for cardiac disease. Nature 451, 937–942 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06800

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