Vascular Regenerative Surgery: Promised Land for Tissue Engineers?

Cardiovascular cell therapy is a promising new field for the development of treatments for cardiovascular diseases, which remain a major cause of mortality around the world. In this review, we highlight the options currently available for the development of specific cell therapy approaches applied to regeneration of cardiac and vascular tissues. Different cell types have attracted a lot of attention and extensive investigations for the treatment of vascular diseases, including embryonic stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, and endothelial progenitors. The combination of human cells and increasingly safe and physiologically compliant biomaterials is currently offering an unprecedented opportunity to develop effective cell therapy for either major blood vessels or the microvasculature. Efficacy and safety of cell therapy are the challenges for the new generation of regenerative medicine scientists determined to develop new remedies for cardiovascular diseases. Here we present the state of the art in this biomedical field and the options in terms of cell types and biomaterials currently available for cardiovascular cell therapy