Stem Cell Therapy and the Heart: A Contemporary Review of the Literature

Cardiovascular disease continues to bear a significant and increasing burden on global healthcare resources. Despite significant advances in medical and interventional therapies, cardiovascular disease remains the major cause of death worldwide. Beyond this, chronic congestive heart failure (CHF) affects more than 5 million Americans, only half of whom will survive the next five years. These outcomes data have spawned aggressive research efforts searching for novel therapies and treatments of both ischemic heart disease and CHF. Numerous preclinical studies over the past decade have demonstrated the benefit of stem cell therapies with respect to improvement in cardiac function. More recently, research efforts have shifted towards clinical randomized trials examining the role of stem cell therapy in a variety of cardiac conditions. This review focuses on the current status of cardiac cell based therapy while examining the most recent randomized trials including both ischemic and nonischemic cardiomyopathies with an emphasis on current and future application of these novel therapies. Despite ongoing advancements, a variety of obstacles exists and must be addressed prior to widespread clinical implementation of cell-based therapies for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases.