Following a heart attack, the human body is incapable of repairing lost tissue due to the heart’s inability to generate new muscle. However, treatment with heart progenitor cells could result in the formation of functional heart cells at injured sites. This new therapeutic approach has been introduced by an international team in Nature Cell Biology. The aim is to start clinical studies within the next two years. How can the heart function be restored after a heart attack? With an estimated 18 million deaths each year globally from cardiovascular diseases according to the World Health Organization (WHO), this is the subject of research worldwide. A possible answer could be the treatment with an enriched pool of human pluripotent stem cell derived ventricular progenitors, or HVPs for short.
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