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Regenerating cardiac cells: insights from the bench and the clinic

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Abstract

A major challenge in cardiovascular regenerative medicine is the development of novel therapeutic strategies to restore the function of cardiac muscle in the failing heart. The heart has historically been regarded as a terminally differentiated organ that does not have the potential to regenerate. This concept has been updated by the discovery of cardiac stem and progenitor cells that reside in the adult mammalian heart. Whereas diverse types of adult cardiac stem or progenitor cells have been described, we still do not know whether these cells share a common origin. A better understanding of the physiology of cardiac stem and progenitor cells should advance the successful use of regenerative medicine as a viable therapy for heart disease. In this review, we summarize current knowledge of the various adult cardiac stem and progenitor cell types that have been discovered. We also review clinical trials presently being undertaken with adult stem cells to repair the injured myocardium in patients with coronary artery disease.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Medjaden Bioscience for editorial assistance in the preparation of this manuscript.

Disclosures

No conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, are declared by the authors.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Burn Research, State Key Laboratory of Trauma, Burns and Combined Injury, Southwest Hospital, The Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, 400038, China

    Miao Teng & YueSheng Huang

  2. Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases of PLA, Xinqiao Hospital, The Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, 400038, China

    XiaoHui Zhao

Authors
  1. Miao Teng
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  2. XiaoHui Zhao
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to YueSheng Huang.

Additional information

Miao Teng and Xiaohui Zhao contributed equally to this work.

This work was carried out under the Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 81101425), Program of State Key Laboratory (no. SKLZZ201121) and Key Project of China National Programs for Basic Research and Development (no. 2012CB518101).

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Teng, M., Zhao, X. & Huang, Y. Regenerating cardiac cells: insights from the bench and the clinic. Cell Tissue Res 350, 189–197 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00441-012-1484-7

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