Nuevas estrategias terapéuticas para la reparación cardíaca tras un infarto de miocardio

Laburpena

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. Myocardial infarction causes a massive loss of cardiomyocytes and the appearance of an ischemic area which is eventually replaced by a fibrotic scar. Current therapies help to mitigate symptoms but are unable to regenerate the cardiac tissue. The most effective treatment for end-stage heart failure is heart transplantation which is a highly invasive and complex surgical procedure. Therefore, due to the low cardiac endogenous renewal capacity, regenerative medicine and biomedical engineering strategies are being investigated to repair the heart damage and restore normal cardiac function. These strategies include the use of cells, extracellular vesicles and/or proteins in combination with drug delivery systems. This combination involves de use of different biomaterials that improve survival, differentiation and engraftment in the case of cell therapy and protect proteins and extracellular vesicles from degradation allowing a controlled release. In this review, we briefly discuss the current treatments and provide insight into new therapeutic strategies for cardiac repair that have potential opportunities for future research and clinical translation. In this regard, the type of material, cell source, growth factors, dose and administration schedule are still uncertain and further research is needed to establish the perfect combination between biomaterials, cells, extracellular vesicles and proteins.