Autologous cell transplantation and cardiac tissue engineering: potential applications in heart failure

The promising concept of cell transplantation and cardiac tissue engineering has been developed in the last few years and focused on strategies attempting to replace dysfunctional, necrotic, and/or apoptotic cardiomyocytes with new cells of mesodermal origin. Transplantation of autologous cells minimizes the risk of neoplasia and avoids immune rejection associated with allogenic or xenogenic cells and recent data hold enormous hopes for short term clinical practices. Tissue engineering represents another promising approach that makes possible the creation of new functional tissues to replace the lost or failing one. Three-dimensional polymeric scaffolds provide the mechanical support for the candidate cells until the formation of cardiac-like tissue prior to surgical repair of the infarcted myocardium. For ultimate clinical applications, further investigations have to select the appropriate cell types, to determine the sufficient number of grafted cells and to provide the long term evaluation of these strategies in the global improvements of cardiac function (neoangiogenesis, synchronous contraction and extracellular matrix remodelling).