Cardiac Stem Cell Therapy, Quo Vadis

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease causes 30% of global mortality and is still the number one cause of death worldwide [1]. A main patho-physiological process is the coronary disease leading to malperfusion and ischemic cardiac disease as well as cardiac infarction. Despite the many improvements of cardiovascular therapies such as coronary stents, percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (developed in 1977 [2]) or bypass surgery, scared heart tissue can still not be repaired. It seems, that finding of new therapeutic options are necessary. Hereby, cell therapy is a great hope. It is almost 30 years ago when cardiomyoplasty was proposed, i.e. culturing cardiac cells derived from stem cells and implanting them back into scar tissue. In 1991 Hescheler and Wobus [3] could show for the first time the physiological properties in cardiomyocytes developed within embryoid bodies, i.e. the first functional in vitro differentiation system of embryonic stem cells.