Heart Progenitors in Cardiovascular Development and Disease: Cardiac Progenitors Transatlantic Alliance (CAPTAA)

• Ketty SCHWARTZ, Groupe Hospitalier Pitié-Salpêtrière, INSERM U582, Paris († 26/12/2007) / Philippe MENASCHE, Hôpital Européen G. Pompidou, INSERM U633, Paris (France)

• Kenneth R. CHIEN, University of California at San Diego (USA)

Heart failure, resulting from an injury such as a heart attack or from other kinds of heart disease, remains a significant source of death and disability. The disease process is often inexorable, with limited treatment options. An exciting possibility for treatment centers on the possibility of replacing damaged or dead heart cells with new cells. This network investigates the possibility of using cardiac progenitor cells to treat heart failure. Several different progenitor cells are being studied, including those derived from embryonic stem cells, adult skeletal muscle (myoblasts) and adult fat adipose) tissue. Evaluating these cells for their therapeutic potential also leads to insight about normal cardiac development as well as the abnormalities that cause disease. Because the technique used to deliver cells may be as important to the success of the therapy as the type of cells, the network is also exploring different strategies of cell administration, such as combinations of different cell types, applying sheets of cells instead of individual cell injections, and engineered tissues. The major work of this network centers on:

1. Understanding the biology of mouse and human cardioblasts
2. Exploring the potential of cardioblast therapy for heart failure after myocardial infarction
3. Engineering heart tissue from cardioblasts
4. Determining the role of cardioblasts in human hypertrophic and dilated cardiomyopathies, congenital heart disease, conduction system disease and in the cardiomyopathies associated with neuromuscular disease.