Search

The ability to create new functional cardiomyocytes is the holy grail of cardiac regenerative medicine. From studies using model organisms, new insights into the fundamental pathways that drive heart muscle regeneration have begun to arise as well as a growing knowledge of the distinct families of multipotent cardiovascular progenitors that generate diverse lineages during heart development. In this Review, we highlight this intersection of the "pregenerative" biology of heart progenitor cells and heart regeneration and discuss the longer term challenges and opportunities in moving toward a therapeutic goal of regenerative cardiovascular medicine.

Symptomatic heart failure (HF) is a complex clinical syndrome with a poor prognosis. Many efforts have been made to develop new therapeutic strategies to improve prognosis associated with HF. In this context, different stem-cell populations for cardiac regenerative therapy have been examined recently. Here we discuss the potential strategies for using stem cells in cardiac regenerative therapy and the barriers that remain before an effective cell-based cardiac regenerative therapy can be employed clinically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]