Treatment Of Myocardial Infarction With Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells

[Background]Chronic congestive heart failure (CHF) is the terminal stage of all kinds of cardiovascular diseases. Myocardial infarction (MI) is one of the common heart diseases which may cause sudden cardiac death. The physiopathologic changes involve coronary artery stenosis, formation of atheromatous plaque, cardiocytes necrosis and heart failure. Severe heart failure secondary to MI is often fatal. It is still one of the major worldwide cardiovascular disorders despite of considerable advances in diagnosis and treatment of heart diseases. The necrotic cardiocytes are gradually replaced by fibrotic noncontractile cells and then form the scar tissue, finally result in ventricular remodeling. Although heart transplantation is an option for patients with severe congestive heart failure, donor shortage and postoperative complications such as rejection limit the clinic application.Recently, some studies showed that transplantation of smooth muscle cells, skeletal muscle cells and cardiocytes could limit the scar expansion and reduce the occurrence of heart failure, but these cells were eventually eliminated by rejection. Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), are the most expectable candidate for cell transplantation. The aim of our study was to investigate the feasibility and efficacy of transplantation of the human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal cells (hMSCs) for treatment of myocardial infarction on animal models.