Table 1.

Potential strategies of stem cells in cardiovascular medicine

Cell Type	Pros	Cons	Latest developments	Who is working on this strategy?	Refs
Strategy 1 - Cells as therapy
1. Skeletal myoblast	Ischemia-resistant	Arrhythmogenesis due to lack of electromechanical coupling	Connexin 43-expressing cell engraftment prevent post-infarct arrhythmia	Fleischmann, B.K. bernd.fleischmann@uni-bonn.de	[5,6]
2. Bone marrow stem cell	Autologous Safe	Mixed results Paracrine effects?	Lin−/c-Kit+ cells	Zeiher, A.M. zeiher@em.uni-frankfurt.de	[15]
3. Resdient cardiac stem cell	Endogenous	Paracrine effect? Limited proliferating capacity?	Myocardium-derived cells Epicardium-derived cells	Marban, E. marban@jhmi.edu Gittenberge Groot, A.C. acgitten@lumc.nl	[29] [33]
4. Embryonic stem cell	Highly proliferative	Ethics Long-term benefits? Poor survival after transplantation	Embryonic cell-derived cardiac cells	Murry, C.E. murry@u.washington.edu Mummery, C. christin@niob.knaw.nl	[39]
5. Induced pluripotent stem cell	Patient-specific	Viral infection	Reprogramming with different types of cells and factors	Yamanaka, S. yamanaka@frontier.kyoto-u.ac.jp Hochedlinger, K. khochedlinger@helix.mgh.harvard.edu	[49]
Strategy 2 - Cells as target of therapy
1. GCSF	Safe	Lack of cardiomyocyte transdifferentiation from hematopoietic stem cells	Disappointing in clinical trials	Schomig, A. aschoemig@dhm.mhn.de	[54]
2. HMG (B1, A2)	No rejection	Limited clinical data	Activation of c-Kit+ cardiac stem cells	Capogrossi, M.C. capogrossi@idi.it Kumuro, I. komuro-tky@umin.ac.jp	[57] [58]
3. Thymosin β4	No rejection	Limited clinical data	Promoting coronary neovascularization	Riley, P.R. P.Riley@ich.ucl.ac.uk	[36]
Strategy 3 - Cells as platform for drug screening
1. Toxicity screening	High throughput Less expensive	Need in vivo validation	Expanding library of chemicals and assays	Rubin, Lee L lee_rubin@harvard.edu	[59]
2. Efficacy screening	High throughput Less expansive	Need in vivo validation	Use target compound to probe disease mechanism	Zon, L.I. zon@enders.tch.harvard.edu	[60]
3. Disease modeling	Patient-specific	Need in vivo validation	Validate disease pathogenesis in patient-specific ESCs and iPSCs	Eggan, K. eggan@mcb.harvard.edu	[62]