Pharmacological Therapy in the Heart as an Alternative to Cellular Therapy: A Place for the Brain Natriuretic Peptide?

Figure 1

Cardiovascular cell lineage. Schematic representation depicting the origin of cardiomyocytes and endothelial and smooth muscle cells, as well as the conduction system. Several proteins are associated with the different stage of differentiation of the cardiac cells: islet-1, Flk-1, and c-kit are expressed at an undifferentiated stage, whereas the expression of Nkx2.5 and Sca-1 identifies more differentiated cardiac precursor cells.