title: Colonizing the heart from the epicardial side.
abstract: The clinical use of stem cells, such as bone marrow-derived and, more recently, resident cardiac stem cells, offers great promise for treatment of myocardial infarction and heart failure. The epicardium-derived cells have also attracted attention for their angiogenic paracrine actions and ability to differentiate into cardiomyocytes and vascular cells when activated during cardiac injury. In a recent study, Chong and colleagues have described a distinct population of epicardium-derived mesenchymal stem cells that reside in a perivascular niche of the heart and have a broad multilineage potential. Exploring the therapeutic capacity of these cells will be an exciting future endeavor.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA. nbursac@duke.edu
authors.forename: Nenad
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Bursac
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001854:Bone Marrow Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D059630:Mesenchymal Stem Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D032383:Myocytes, Cardiac / Q000502:physiology*; D010496:Pericardium / Q000166:cytology*