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Timing of intracoronary bone-marrow-derived stem cell transplantation after ST-elevation myocardial infarction

Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine volume 3, pages S52–S56 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

It is still unclear whether the timing of intracoronary stem cell therapy affects the therapeutic response in patients with reperfused myocardial infarction. The natural course of healing the infarction and the presence of putative homing signals within the damaged myocardium appear to favor cell engraftment during the transendothelial passage in the early days after reperfusion. However, the adverse inflammatory environment, with its high oxidative stress, might be deleterious if cells are administered too early after reperfusion. In addition, current studies use mostly unfractionated cells and it remains to be addressed whether specific cell types, and their enrichment, would be better suited to augmenting the recovery at later time points. Here we highlight several aspects of the timing of intracoronary stem cell therapy and focus on time-related questions that are relevant to the design of future experimental and basic studies.

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Figure 1: Homing factors and timing of intracoronary stem cell therapy

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Co-directors at the Cardiovascular Center, OLV Ziekenhuis, Aalst, Belgium

    Jozef Bartunek, William Wijns, Guy R Heyndrickx & Marc Vanderheyden

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  1. Jozef Bartunek
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  2. William Wijns
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  3. Guy R Heyndrickx
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  4. Marc Vanderheyden
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Correspondence to Jozef Bartunek.

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Jozef Bartunek, William Wijns, Guy R Heyndrickx and Marc Vanderheyden are all members of the Cardiovascular Research Aalst, a nonprofit foundation promoting clinical and translational research at the Cardiovascular Center, OLV Ziekenhuis, Aalst, Belgium, and is a founding member of Cardio3, a start-up company working in the field of cardiac stem cells.

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Bartunek, J., Wijns, W., Heyndrickx, G. et al. Timing of intracoronary bone-marrow-derived stem cell transplantation after ST-elevation myocardial infarction. Nat Rev Cardiol 3 (Suppl 1), S52–S56 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncpcardio0417

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