Heart: Development and Regeneration Potential

It has been a conventional thought that the mammalian heart has a limited and inadequate innate regenerative potential. The frequency of cardiomyocyte replacement ranges from 1% per year in young adults to 0.45% in the elderly. That is probably why cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. However, a decade of research has led some investigators to question the dogma that all heart muscle cells are terminally differentiated and post mitotic. Success in bringing the latest advances of cardiac stem cell research for practical purposes in humans would be one of the greatest successes in the history of medicine. Scar tissue formation after infarction causes a decline in cardiac function. Interestingly, a highly specialized regenerative processes exists in certain ...