The topic of Matsumi Ladies Clinic Mita English blog in August is about the heart.

In the last part, I create an article about the regenerative therapies for the heart disease from the medical perspectives.

 

Heart failure is one of the most common causes of death.

Cells, called cardiomyocytes, in the cardiac muscle has minimal proliferative capacity.

Depletion of cardiomyocytes causes decreased cardiac contraction, which leads to pathological cardiac dilatation, additional cardiomyocyte loss, and mechanical dysfunction, resulting in heart failure.

The effects of pharmacological therapies for patients with severe heart failure are limited.

Surgical therapies such as the use of ventricular assist devices and heart transplantation are not widly performed.

 

From this viewpoint, much attention has been given to regenerative therapy.

There are several strategies for heart regeneration.

 

Transplantation of somatic stem cells (MSCs:mesenchymal stem cells) was safe and modestly improved cardiac function after myocardial infarction.

Alternatively, new cardiomyocytes could be generated from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to transplant into injured hearts.

Several issues, such as a potential risk of tumorigenesis and poor survival of transplanted cells in the injured heart, remain to be resolved.