Cell Therapies for Heart Function Recovery: Focus on Myocardial Tissue Engineering and Nanotechnologies

Table 2

Potential cells for new therapeutic treatment.

Candidates	Concerns	Side effects	Mechanism of action	Clinical trials	Change in cardiac function (% EF versus ctrl.)*
Human embryonic stem cells	Ethics purification	Teratoma	Differentiation/myogenesis	FDA approval
Fetal/neonatal cardiac muscle cells	Ethics accessibility		Differentiation/myogenesis	×
Induced pluripotent stem cells		Teratoma	Differentiation/myogenesis	×
Cardiac stem cells			Differentiation/myogenesis	✓ (2009)	−0.2; +6.0
Skeletal muscle myoblasts	Poor electrocoupling	Arrhythmia	Paracrine effect	✓	+3; +14
Bone marrow stem cells	Purification/loss of function with age	Arrhythmia?	Paracrine effect	✓	−3.0; +12
Progenitors	Survival and controlled differentiation		Paracrine effect	✓	+2.8, +6.3

*EF: ejection fraction of the treated heart compared to control groups (adapted from Segers and Lee, 2008 [28]).