Muscling up damaged hearts through cell therapy

Molecular and cellular processes gleaned from the most fundamental of biomedical studies are now harnessed for their potential healing properties. In the US and through-out the world, millions of patients suffer from myocardial infarction and many succumb to the morbidity and mortal-ity of the ensuing cardiac failure, a protracted condition in need of healing. While pharmacological agents have been the mainstay intervention that ameliorates cardiac failure through increased contractility or reduction of cardiac workload, these agents do not inherently heal the wounds inflicted by poor perfusion of the affected cardiac tissue. Cell therapy, however, holds the promise of repleting the damage heart with new contractile cells that can be engi-neered to secrete concoctions that promote healing by recruiting new blood vessel development or angiogenesis. Such cell therapeutic promise has already been fulfilled for many decades for hematological diseases through trans-plantation of bone marrow stem cells, which are now more broadly implicated for their healing potential of other tissues.