Stem Cell Therapy in Acute Myocardial Infarction: A Pot of Gold or Pandora's Box

Table 1

Evidence of myocardial regeneration.

Study	Findings
Kajstura et al. 1998 [3]	14×106 myocytes in mitosis by confocal microscopy.
Beltrami et al. 2001 [4]	4% myocytes in mitosis by labeling with nuclei antigen Ki-67.
Hierlihy et al. 2002 [5]	Endogenous resident cardiac lineage negative [L-] C-Kit + stem cells differentiated into all three main myocardial cell types; myocardial, endothelial, and smooth muscle cell types.
Laflamme et al. 2002 [6]; Quaini et al. 2002 [7]	Sex-mismatched cardiac transplantations, homing of recipient’s progenitor cells in the myocardium was demonstrated. In the procedure Y chromosome in situ hybridization was used to track the male cells in the female allografts coupled with immunostaining to define the identity that these cells had acquired.
Jackson et al. 2001 [8] and Bittira et al. 2003 [9]	Marrow-derived progenitor cells circulate and home to injured tissues similarly to leukocytes, where they contribute to the formation of new tissues.