Bone marrow-derived endothelial progenitor cells: isolation and characterization for myocardial repair

Vascular regeneration with bone marrow (BM) stem/progenitor cells is one of the promising therapeutic strategies for myocardial repair in cardiovascular diseases. Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) have demonstrated the beneficial effects on ischemia-induced myocardial damage promoting angiogenesis in ischemic tissue. Isolation of EPCs from BM or peripheral blood is required for the cell-based therapeutic approach. Among a variety of EPC isolation methods, specifically in the case of experimental animal models, we have shown our recently developed mouse-cultured EPC isolation protocol, which is viable for obtaining enough number of viable cells for not only in vitro but also in vivo experiments, and the protocol for human CD34(+) cell (EPC rich cell population) isolation from peripheral blood and characterization by fluorescence-activated sorting (FACS) system.