This review summarizes the populations of resident cardiac stem cells and the signaling pathways required for their migration to sites of myocardial injury.
Does not support clinical adoption of cardiac stem cell therapies; leaves open their migration pathways as targets for future trials.
Ischemic heart disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Stem cell-based therapy, which aims to restore cardiac structure and function by regeneration of functional myocardium, has recently been proposed as a novel alternative treatment modality. Resident cardiac stem cells (CSCs) in adult hearts are a key cell type under investigation. CSCs have been shown to be able to repair damaged myocardium and improve myocardial function in both human and animal studies. This approach relies not only on the proliferation of the CSCs, but also upon their migration to the site of injury within the heart. Here, we briefly review reported CSC populations and discuss signaling factors and pathways required for the migration of CSCs.
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Liang et al. (2012) studied this question.
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