Stem Cell Therapy in Acute Myocardial Infarction

Over the last several years, much headway has been made in the arena of coronary artery disease, specifically in the rapid diagnosis and revascularization therapy of acute myocardial infarction. Despite these advances however, given the natural history of acute myocardial infarction (AMI), a significant proportion of patients are left with significant morbidities by consequences of impaired left ventricular function. Stem cell therapy, which was initially introduced as a novel approach to regenerate injured cardiac myocytes, has widely been gaining popularity as a feasible strategy for repairing injured myocardial muscle tissue. Over a decade of basic and clinical research has gone into determining the effectiveness of targeted progenitor stem cell delivery in the improvement of myocardial function and cardiac physiology. Our paper is a general review of the stem cells therapy in patients that have had acute myocardial infarction. Although, much of the data thus far has been suggestive of the potential benefit of this approach in human models, a quest for a definitive answer is still underway. In the treatment of acute myocardial infarction, targeted stem cell therapy, at the very least, is a union of cellular biology and clinical cardiology, which albeit nascent in its development, has laid the framework for a clear direction into the future of cardiovascular medicine.