Autologous cell based therapy for treating chronic infarct myocardium.

Recent experimental and clinical studies have shown that autologous cell based therapy using skeletal myoblasts or bone marrow-derived stem cells might have beneficial effects in chronic ischemic heart disease. The underlying concept is based on the repopulation of necrotic tissue by either readily contractile myoblasts or by bone marrow-derived stem cells. However, there is a need to resolve a number of issues for determining the better way to perform these treatments and, moreover, for assessing the real beneficial functional effect of each of these cell therapies.