Cardiac stem cell therapy research in China

For more than two decades, the morbidity and mortality of coronary artery disease (CAD) has been increasing rapidly in China. Despite tremendous advances in treatment strate-gies of CAD, heart failure after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) continues to be one of the greatest medical chal-lenges throughout the world. In 1994, Soonpaa and col-leagues first reported the possibility of cardiomyocytes implantation and suggested that intracardiac cell grafting might provide a useful approach for myocardial repair.1 Cell implantation has become a novel therapeutic option for is-chemic cardiac injury and heart failure.