Concise review: cell therapy and tissue engineering for cardiovascular disease

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality, especially in developed countries. Various therapies for cardiovascular disease are investigated actively and are performed clinically. Recently, cell-based regenerative medicine using several cell sources has appeared as an alternative therapy for curing cardiovascular diseases. Scaffold-based or cell sheet-based tissue engineering is focused as a new generational cell-based regenerative therapy, and the clinical trials have also been started. Cell-based regenerative therapies have an enormous potential for treating cardiovascular disease. This review summarizes the recent research of cell sources and cell-based-regenerative therapies for cardiovascular diseases.

Figure 1.

Cell-based regenerative therapy for cardiovascular disease. ESC/iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes, skeletal myoblasts, BM- and PB-derived cells, CSCs, and EPCs are used as cell sources for the therapy of cardiovascular disease. The cell-based therapies are performed by using the injection of dissociated cells, scaffold-based tissue engineering, and cell sheet-based tissue engineering. Abbreviations: BM, bone marrow; CSC, cardiac stem cell; ESC, embryonic stem cell; iPSC, induced pluripotent stem cell; PB, peripheral blood.