Journal of Genes and Cells

45-66

Authors: Monireh Bahrami

Cardiovascular problems have been known as largest cause of mortality in the world. It has been reported that only in U.S., 16.9 million deaths happen annually just because of coronary heart disease. Stem cells have shown a promising potential in regenerative medicine and more than 25,000 clinical trials have been completed so far. Stem cell researchers have ultimate aspiration to have successful cardiac regeneration and are working for the successful cardiac phenotype adaptation of transplanted stem cells. Obstacles and potential stem cell therapeutic risks associated with their clinical applications such as poor survival of the donor cells after engraftment etc, have reduced the translational potential of this research. In this review, we have focused on the advancement in cellular therapeutic efficacy for cardiac regeneration. It has been proposed that some engineering techniques applied to enhance therapeutic potential of stem cells have shown promising potential for daily routine clinical practice. Pre-clinical and clinical data have been presented to justify this improvement. The mechanisms to engineer cells for induction or alteration in stem cells for targeted therapy need recommendations for future clinical work to have a state-of-art approach in cardiac regeneration.