Regenerative Strategies for Cardiac Disease

Current treatments for ischemic heart disease (IHD) are generally limited to palliative measures and do not halt or reverse the loss of cardiac muscle cells, the defining characteristic of the disease. Recent findings in the stem cell and developmental biology fields have suggested the possibility of generating new heart muscle using cells derived from a variety of sources. These include adult autologous stem cells found in bone marrow or skeletal muscle, autologous ­cardiac progenitor cells, embryonic stem cells, and induced pluripotent stem cells or other types of reprogrammed cells. Beating cardiomyocytes have been successfully obtained from a number of these different cell types in both murine and human models, but significant technical challenges remain before cell-based cardiac regeneration is a viable therapy. Nevertheless, a large research effort is underway to address these challenges, and the outlook for revolutionizing the treatment of IHD is optimistic.