Affiliations: Department of Cell Therapy and Tissue Engineering, UMR7563 CNRS, Faculty of Medicine-Nancy, France | Laboratory of Surgery School, Faculty of Medicine-Nancy, France | Service of Nuclear Medicine, CHU-Nancy, France | Service of Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital, Free University of Brussels (AZ VUB), 101 Laarbeeklaan, 1090, Brussels, Belgium | Laboratory of Pathology, CHU-Nancy, France
Note: [] Corresponding author: Nguyen Tran, PhD, Laboratory of Surgery School, Faculty of Medicine, Avenue de la Forêt de Haye, 54500 Vandoeuvre lès Nancy, France. Tel.: +33 3 83 68 33 91; Fax: +33 3 83 68 33 99; E-mail: Nguyen.Tran@medecine. uhp-nancy.fr.
Abstract: Recent experimental and clinical studies have shown that autologous cell based therapy using skeletal myoblasts or bone marrow-derived stem cells might have beneficial effects in chronic ischemic heart disease. The underlying concept is based on the repopulation of necrotic tissue by either readily contractile myoblasts or by bone marrow-derived stem cells. However, there is a need to resolve a number of issues for determining the better way to perform these treatments and, moreover, for assessing the real beneficial functional effect of each of these cell therapies. In this mini-review, we will discuss (i) the issues of the selection of chronic infarct animal to truly determine the impact of cell therapy on cardiac function recovery, and (ii) the evaluation of the bio-availability and the bio-distribution of transplanted cells. Some new investigational methodologies based on clinical end-points are also proposed.
