Empowering human cardiac progenitor cells by P2Y nucleotide receptor overexpression.

Key Points: Autologous cardiac progenitor cell (CPC) therapy is a promising approach for treatment of heart failure (HF). There is an unmet need to identify inherent deficits in aged/diseased human CPCs (hCPCs) derived from HF patients in the attempts to augment their regenerative capacity prior to use in the clinical setting. Here we report significant functional correlations between phenotypic properties of hCPCs isolated from cardiac biopsies of HF patients, clinical parameters of patients and expression of the P2Y purinergic receptor (P2Y R), a crucial detector for extracellular UDP-sugars released during injury/stress.