CARDIOVASCULAR
ENGINEERING
Journal for Extracorporeal Circulation, Assist Devices,Transplantation and Artificial Organs
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CARDIOVASCULAR
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Volume 1, 1996, No 1 |
Abstract:
In the past decade there has been a marked increase of activity
in the myocardial regeneration research. Such attempts are mainly
divided in two large streams, which could be described as
molecular and cellular cardiomyoplasty. The former concentrates
on abolishing cellular mechanisms inhibiting cardiomyocyte
proliferation in vivo. Cellular cardiomyoplasty focuses on the
introduction of striated muscle cells into the injured myocardium
with the objective to improve myocardial contractility. Various
cell types such as cardiac and skeletal cell lines, fetal
cardiomyocytes as well as adult primary myoblasts (satellite
cells) have been used to achieve this goal. The purpose of our
experiments was to evaluate our hypothesis that satellite cells
when implanted into the damaged cardiac muscle can grow there and
repair the myocardium. In our experiments we implanted satellite
cells into the cryo-injured myocardium. Muscle fibres found
within the implant sites demonstrated features typical to either
cardiac, skeletal or mosaic (both, cardiac and skeletal)
phenotypes, depending on the experimental conditions. To explain
our preliminary findings we propose the confluence hypothesis,
which links the cell confluence level in vitro with the cell
commitment to differentiate, and the muscle phenotype expressed
in vivo. The presence of contractile striated muscle replacing
the cardiac scar should have a positive effect in improving
myocardial function in heart failure patients.
Keywords:
myocardial regeneration, molecular and cellular cardiomyoplasty,
satellite cell, confluence hypothesis
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