Cell Grafting for Cardiac Repair

Despite impressive advances in the last decade in treating coronary atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction remains the number one cause of death and disability in industrialized countries. A great deal of effort has been expended over the last 25 years toward identifying strategies to limit the amount of myocardium lost to infarction (1 ,2 ). Although infarct size limitation remains a highly desirable goal, it has been extremely difficult to achieve clinically. A fundamental problem is the fact that ischemic myocardium dies quite rapidly, whereas most patients wait for more than 3 hours before seeking medical attention. Over the last 5 years, our group has become increasingly interested in working on strategies to enhance the repair phase of myocardial infarction (3 –7 ). Our long term goals are to induce muscular regeneration of the infarcted region. This chapter focuses on our work using skeletal muscle cell transplantation for cardiac regeneration.