Function-based Enrichment of Pro-angiogenic Cells for Cardiac Repair

心脏病是欧洲最常见的死亡和疾病。标准治疗只能在一定程度上挽救和保持心脏功能，患者的生活质量仍然很差。最初的研究已经测试了将患者自己的骨髓干细胞注射到受损的心肌中的可能性。因此，我们知道这种治疗是安全的，而且比单纯的传统治疗更能改善心脏功能。然而，研究人员认为，应该对注射的细胞进行更好的表征和选择，以确保它们发挥预期的功能。在我们提出的研究中，我们希望选择那些能够主动向参与再生干细胞吸引的物质移动的细胞。我们以前已经证明，这种方法可以用来分离具有某些特性的细胞，这些特性对它们的有益作用是必要的。然而，所选细胞的更好功能需要在反映人类患者情况的小鼠模型中得到证明。一旦我们证明根据功能能力选择的细胞比目前使用的细胞表现更好，我们将能够开发一种临床适用的方法来提高干细胞治疗的效率。

Heart disease is the most common course for death and illness across Europe. Standard therapy can rescue and preserve heart function only to a certain degree, still leaving the patient with a poor quality of life. Initial studies have tested the potential of injecting the patient s own bone marrow stem cells into the damaged heart muscle. We therefore know that the treatment is safe and can improve heart function more than classical therapy alone. However, researchers believe that the cells which are injected should be characterised and selected better to make sure they perform their supposed function.In the proposed study, we want to select for cells which are able to actively travel towards a substance involved in attraction of regenerative stem cells. We have demonstrated before that this method can be used to isolate cells which have certain characteristics necessary for their beneficial action. However, the better function of the selected cells needs to be demonstrated in a mouse model mirroring the situation of the human patient. Once we have shown that cells selected on the basis of their functional ability perform better than currently used cells, we will be in the position to develop a clinically applicable method improving the efficiency of stem cell therapy.