For cardiovascular application, skeletal myoblasts are of great interest as they can be easily isolated and are associated with high proliferation rate.
Adipose tissue host progenitor cells with reported interesting cardiomyogenic and vasculogenic potential in the sense that they improve heart functions and reduce infarction size in rodent animal models.
[4] This self-regeneration capacity gives rise to alternatives to classical cellular therapies whereby administration of growth factors such as Thymosin β4 for cell activation and migration are solely necessary.
To resume, stem cells and delivery routes aforementioned are suitable for cardiomyoplasty as demonstrated safe with some degree of benefit for the patient.
Another point of consideration concerns the use of embryonic stem cells, whereby indifferentiation yields uncontrolled proliferation and possible consequent formation of teratomas.
From a cellular perspective,[5] available techniques are monolayer cell construct onto temperature-sensitive polymer, where their detachment is driven by behavior of the mechanical properties of the synthetic support without the need of any enzymatic digestion such as trypsin.
Cardiomyocites sheets have also been successfully implanted with an observed contractile function as a result of inter-cellular communication between the host and graft.
To date, no hydrogel matrix is FDA-approved for stem cell therapy use despite a large number of biomaterials currently commercially available.
Indeed, they permit either the modification of the purified natural biopolymers or by coupling the synthetic component with integrin and/or growth factor binding sites.