Anversa, Piero

PIERO ANVERSA IS a distinguished investigator in the field of cardiovascular applications of stem cell research. His work contributed to a paradigm shift about cardiac physiology, strengthening the position that conceives of the heart as a self—renewing organ. He was born in Parma, Italy, in 1940. He gained his medical degree at the University of Parma in 1965, where he worked as assistant professor of pathology until 1980. In the early 1980s, he started his collaboration with the New York Medical College, where he was appointed professor of medicine in microbiology, immunology, and pathology. In 1985 Dr. Anversa permanently moved to United States, where he currently holds the office of director of the New York Medical College Cardiovascular Research Institute and vice chairman of the Department of Medicine.

Piero Anversa made a great effort to change the widespread conception of the heart as a terminally differentiated postmitotic organ, incapable of any sort of regeneration. One of the first observations that opened the way to such a deep revision of cardiac cellular homeostasis was the finding of male cells, endowed with a XY karyotype, in female hearts transplanted into male recipients. A deeper investigation of this heart chimerism phenomenon subsequently demonstrated a group of c—kit—positive cells, which can differentiate into myocytes, endothelial cells, and smooth muscle cells. This multipotent, clonogenic, and self—renewing cell population was proven to be a primitively cardiac sort of stem cell. Cardiac stem cells (CSCs) have been isolated from different species of mammalian [Page 14]hearts, including human ones. They are distributed into the myocardium along with supporting cells, forming stem cell niches. Such a peculiar micro—environment significantly interacts with CSCs, regulating their proliferative potential through junctional proteins and soluble mediators in a mostly unidentified manner. The origin of these stem cell pools has been a debated issue ever since the first observations of heart chimerism were made: A scrupulous analysis of mouse embryonic heart made by Eberhard and Jockusch provided the evidence that all resident CSCs are formed during embryonic life, whereas heart chimerism in sex—mismatched transplants can be explained by the migration of host cells from atrial remnants to the donor heart.