Cardiac progenitor cells and the development of the human heart

Rat Cardiac progenitor cells and their application in cell therapy

cells and the subsequent heart failure. When the pharmacological approach no longer complies with the disease evolution, organ transplantation appears to be the only treatment able to rescue the patient life. Cell therapy promises to be clinically efficient and would allow circumventing many limitations of organ transplantation, such as organ low availability, major surgical procedures, high costs and longterm immunosuppression [1]. We designed porous Poly-Lactic Acid (PLLA) and Fibroin scaffolds to deliver CPCs in the heart, we isolated and characterized CPCs for the expression of c-Kit, MDR-1 and Sca-1 by flow cytometry, we tested their degree of differentiation in vitro studying the expr…

IMPLANTATION OF CARDIAC STEM CELL-LOADED POLY-LACTIC ACID AND FIBRINOIN SCAFFOLDS INTO NUDE MICE TO EVALUATE POTENTIAL FOR CARDIAC MUSCLE TISSUE ENGINEERING

Poly-lactic acid and fibrinoin scaffolds as three-dimensional device to differentiate cardiac stem cells: in vitro and in vivo studies

Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology, Vol 115, No 1/2 (Supplement) 2010

Synthetic scaffolds may be used for the orientation of cardiac stem cells properties, differentiation and extracellular matrix interactions in cardiac tissue engineering: in vitro and in vivo studies.

MicroRNAs expression in c-Kit+/Sca-1+/MDR-1+ cardiac stem cells in three dimensional cultures

Cardiac stem cell-loaded poly-lactic acid and fibrinoin scaffolds as devices for cardiac muscle tissue regeneration

MicroRNA and Cardiac Stem Cell Therapy

Cardiac Progenitor Cells (CPCs) are multipotent cells of the myocardium. They are located inside niches of the heart muscle, can be isolated, characterized and used for cardiac regeneration in stem cell therapy. Actually, CPCs may be isolated by tissue digestion with or without cell sorting, but it is difficult to achieve the maximum level of differentiation when these cells are implanted into a damaged myocardium. The knowledge recently acquired on small molecules of non-coding RNAs, microRNA (miRNA), may improve the use of these cells in stem cell therapy. In fact, these small molecules may be attached to devices or adminstered as they are or in combination with nanoparticles in order to …

Foreign body response to subcutaneously implanted scaffolds for cardiac tissue engineering.

Silk fibroin scaffolds enhance cell commitment of adult rat cardiac progenitor cells

The use of three-dimensional (3D) cultures may induce cardiac progenitor cells to synthesize their own extracellular matrix (ECM) and sarcomeric proteins to initiate cardiac differentiation. 3D cultures grown on synthetic scaffolds may favour the implantation and survival of stem cells for cell therapy when pharmacological therapies are not efficient in curing cardiovascular diseases and when organ transplantation remains the only treatment able to rescue the patient's life. Silk fibroin-based scaffolds may be used to increase cell affinity to biomaterials and may be chemically modified to improve cell adhesion. In the present study, porous, partially orientated and electrospun nanometric n…

Embryonic and foetal Islet-1 positive cells in human hearts are also positive to c-Kit.

During embryogenesis, the mammalian heart develops from a primitive heart tube originating from two bilateral primary heart fields located in the lateral plate mesoderm. Cells belongings to the pre-cardiac mesoderm will differentiate into early cardiac progenitors, which express early transcription factors which are also common to the Isl-1 positive cardiac progenitor cells isolated from the developing pharyngeal mesoderm and the foetal and post-natal mice hearts. A second population of cardiac progenitor cells positive to c-Kit has been abundantly isolated from adult hearts. Until now, these two populations have been considered two different sets of progenitor cells present in the heart in…

Role of microRNAs in fetal heart development and in isolated cardiac progenitor cells

Fibroin and poly-lactic acid scaffolds may be used in cardiac tissue engineering to drive the differentiation of cardiac progenitor cells: in vitro and in vivo studies.

IDENTIFICATION OF C-KIT/CD105 AND ISL-1 CELLS IN HUMAN FETAL AND INFANT HEARTS

During embryogenesis, the mammalian heart develops from a primitive heart tube, which derives from two bilateral primary heart fields located in the lateral plate mesoderm. Later on in the development process, the atrioventricular (A-V) canal and the sinu-atrial segment, at the venous pole, and the conotruncus, at the arterial pole, are added to the heart tube just prior to tube looping. In 2001 Waldo and colleagues and Kelly and colleagues demonstrated the presence of a secondary or anterior heart field in the ventral pharyngeal mesoderm. This region contains a pool of NKX2.5 and GATA-4 positive precardiac cells which migrate to the arterial pole of the primary heart tube. Isl-1 is a marke…

The role of biomaterials in the direction of cardiac stem cells properties, differentiation and extracellular matrix interactions in cardiac tissue engineering

Introduction: One of the main problems in the rapid translation of preclinical cell‐based therapy to restore damaged myocardium is to find the best delivery route and the best time of cell injection into the myocardium. Intramyocardial injection of stem cells is by far the mostused delivery technique in preclinical studies. Three‐dimensional scaffolds may be used to deliver a limited number of stem cells in their undifferentiated state, but many biomaterials may cause a foreign body reaction on their own. We have recently demonstrated that c‐Kit positive cardiac progenitor cells are able to organize themselves into a tissue‐like cell mass in collagen I three‐dimensional cultures within 72h …