Introduction to a Compendium on Regenerative Cardiology.

Abstract

The field of regenerative cardiology continues to evolve rapidly, requiring frequent updates. The purpose of this compendium is to provide our readers with the most recent concepts pertaining to the use of cell-based strategies for the treatment of heart disease both at the preclinical and clinical levels. The focus is on adult stem cells because embryonic stem cells (or their derivatives) are unlikely to find clinical application or to offer significant advantages compared with induced pluripotent stem cells and adult stem cells. It is traditional for compendia published in Circulation Research to start with an Overview in which the Guest Editor(s) outlines the scope and significance of each article. In this case, we could not think of a better author to write the Overview than Dr Eugene Braunwald—the father of modern cardiology. His superb article distils the salient concepts and emerging paradigms in the burgeoning field of cell-based therapies and reparative cardiology and places them in the broader context of cardiovascular medicine. The superb synthesis by Dr Braunwald is followed by a series of Reviews and a Viewpoint that address salient facets of the field, including the basic biology of new myocyte formation and cell-based therapies, paracrine mechanisms, the role of extracellular vesicles, novel techniques, such as genome editing and RNA-based therapies, bioengineering approaches, and finally, clinical trials of cell therapy in patients with cardiovascular disease. Although induced pluripotent stem cells may not find immediate clinical application as a therapy for cardiovascular disease (further work may be required to overcome technical and logistical issues), they offer great promise as a model for investigating inherited arrhythmia syndromes and testing antiarrhythmic strategies, as pointed out by Garg et al.1 Besides cell-based strategies, the use of noncoding RNAs has emerged as a potential therapeutic approach for various cardiovascular diseases, one that does …