Cardiac Regenerative Therapy: from bone marrow stem cells to cardiac progenitors

Abstract

After a MI the heart function is severely diminished due to an irreversible loss of CMs. The heart is no longer considered a static organ but contains some intrinsic regenerative capacity which however is not sufficient to restore function after MI. Regenerative stem cell therapy is a promising approach to improve cardiac function. Since Bone marrow-derived stem cells can be transplanted in a autologous setting and are easy accessible, they were seen as a potential source of stem cells to be transplanted in the infarcted heart. In chapter 3 we described the isolation, characterization, functionality and myocardial differentiation potential of bone marrow-derived MSCs. RT-PCR showed that after 3 weeks of culture in a cardiac micro-environment only the expression of TnT and GATA-4 was induced. The limited cardiac differentiation capacity of these MSCs was shown by immunofluorescence, no cTnT expression at the protein level, and TEM, no sarcomeric organization. In conclusion, these data suggest that MSCs are not able to differentiate in functional CMs....