Circulation research
-
Circulation research · Aug 2013
ReviewCell therapy for heart failure: a comprehensive overview of experimental and clinical studies, current challenges, and future directions.
Despite significant therapeutic advances, the prognosis of patients with heart failure (HF) remains poor, and current therapeutic approaches are palliative in the sense that they do not address the underlying problem of the loss of cardiac tissue. Stem cell-based therapies have the potential to fundamentally transform the treatment of HF by achieving what would have been unthinkable only a few years ago-myocardial regeneration. For the first time since cardiac transplantation, a therapy is being developed to eliminate the underlying cause of HF, not just to achieve damage control. ⋯ Many important issues (eg, mechanism(s) of action of stem cells, long-term engraftment, optimal cell type(s), and dose, route, and frequency of cell administration) remain to be resolved, and no cell therapy has been conclusively shown to be effective. The purpose of this article is to critically review the large body of work performed with respect to the use of stem/progenitor cells in HF, both at the experimental and clinical levels, and to discuss current controversies, unresolved issues, challenges, and future directions. The review focuses specifically on chronic HF; other settings (eg, acute myocardial infarction, refractory angina) are not discussed.
-
Circulation research · Aug 2013
CommentThrough thick and thin: a circulating growth factor inhibits age-related cardiac hypertrophy.
In an intriguing new study, Loffredo et al report that joining the circulation of old mice with that of young mice reduces age-related cardiac hypertrophy. They also found that the growth factor growth/differentiation factor 11 is a circulating negative regulator of cardiac hypertrophy which suggests that raising growth/differentiation factor 11 levels may be useful to treat cardiac hypertrophy associated with aging.