Following the recent advances in cardiac stem cell biology, cardiac tissue has become a primary target of regenerative medicine. With the array of approaches that are currently being tested and the questions that they raise, it becomes increasingly clear that the regeneration of adult myocardium will require the integration of numerous factors that govern cardiac tissue biology in the normal and pathological conditions. This special issue, dedicated to the application of biotechnology in myocardial regeneration, will highlight some of the advances that help propel the field of biomedicine, including newly described pathways of stem cell aging, systems for the location and timing of gene expression in stem cell research (e.g., Cre-lox system), feasible methods of genetic modification of stem cells for myocardial regeneration, biomaterial and biomimetic scaffold development and application, and novel methods of cardiac tissue imaging that allow to follow and evaluate the process of regeneration, noninvasive techniques for the stimulation of myocardium regeneration (e.g., extracorporeal shock wave application). Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Location and timing of gene expression in stem cells
• Viral vectors for gene transfer into stem cells in research and therapy
• Methods of stem cell delivery in the myocardium
• Cardiac tissue engineering (biomaterials and biomimetic scaffolds)
• Imaging methods of healthy, diseased, and stem cell-treated cardiac tissue
• Noninvasive methods of the induction of myocardial regeneration
• Methods for preventing or reversing stem cell and progenitor cell aging

Given the complexity and multitasking of the current approaches, in this special issue we should attempt to bridge the gap between biology (and relative basic science knowledge) and biomedicine (i.e., clinical translation of biotechnological methods). To this aim, every applied biotechnology article or review should be accompanied by a concise explanation of the basic science background of this particular approach.

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jbb/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: