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Large animal models for cardiac stem cell therapies
F Gandolfi1, A Vanelli, G Pennarossa
1Centre for Stem Cell Research, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy. fulvio.gandolfi@unimi.it
Insights
Regenerative medicine offers hope for cardiovascular disease by replacing damaged heart muscle. This review explores large animal models, like dogs and pigs, for studying cardiac stem cells relevant to human therapies.
Area of Science:
- Cardiovascular biology
- Regenerative medicine
- Stem cell research
Background:
- Cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of death globally.
- Current therapies improve survival but high mortality persists.
- Stem cell biology and regenerative medicine show promise for cardiac repair.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review available cardiac stem cell types in large animal models.
- To assess the relevance of these models for human cardiovascular studies.
- To highlight the role of large animals in pre-clinical cardiac research.
Main Methods:
- Review of current scientific literature on cardiac stem cells.
- Focus on stem cell origins (endogenous vs. exogenous) and differentiation.
- Comparison of cardiac characteristics between small and large animal models.
Main Results:
- Large animal models (dog, sheep, pig) are crucial due to cardiac differences from mice.
- Cardiac stem cells can be endogenous or derived from external sources.
- Understanding stem cell types in large animals is key for pre-clinical translation.
Conclusions:
- Large animal models are vital for advancing cardiac regenerative medicine.
- Stem cell therapies hold significant potential for treating cardiomyopathies.
- Further research in large animal models will inform human clinical applications.
Abstract:
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in developed countries and is one of the leading causes of disease burden in developing countries. Therapies have markedly increased survival in several categories of patients, nonetheless mortality still remains high. For this reason high hopes are associated with recent developments in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine that promise to replace damaged or lost cardiac muscle with healthy tissue, and thus to dramatically improve the quality of life and survival in patients with various cardiomyopathies. Much of our insight into the molecular and cellular basis of cardiovascular biology comes from small animal models, particularly mice. However, significant differences exist with regard to several cardiac characteristics when mice are compared with humans. For this reason, large animal models like dog, sheep and pig have a well established role in cardiac research. A distinct characteristic of cardiac stem cells is that they can either be endogenous or derive from outside the heart itself; they can originate as the natural course of their differentiation programme (e.g., embryonic stem cells) or can be the result of specific inductive conditions (e.g., mesenchymal stem cells). In this review we will summarize the current knowledge on the kind of heart-related stem cells currently available in large animal species and their relevance to human studies as pre-clinical models.
