| Issue |
Regen Med Res
Volume 1, 2013
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 9 | |
| Number of page(s) | 5 | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1186/2050-490X-1-9 | |
| Published online | 06 December 2013 | |
Review
Endothelial progenitor cells in cardiovascular diseases: from biomarker to therapeutic agent
Departments of Clinical Pharmacy and Cardiology, the 2nd Affiliated Hospital, Harbin Medical University, The Key Laboratory of Myocardial Ischemia, Chinese Ministry of Education, Harbin 150086, P.R. China
* Correspondence: zhirenz@yahoo.com
Received: 31 July 2013
Accepted: 16 October 2013
Regenerative medicine techniques to recover cardiac and vascular function are being increasingly investigated as management strategies for cardiovascular diseases. Circulating endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) derived from bone marrow are immature cells capable of differentiating into mature endothelial cells and play a role in vascular reparative processes and neoangiogenesis. The potency of EPCs for cardiovascular regeneration has been demonstrated in many preclinical studies and therapeutic utility of EPCs has been evaluated in early-phase clinical trials. However, the regenerative activity and efficiency of the differentiation of EPCs are still limited, and a directed differentiation method for EPCs cells has not been fully demonstrated. In this review, we introduce the role of circulating EPCs as biomarkers of cardiovascular diseases and medical applications of EPCs for cardiovascular regeneration.
Key words: Endothelial progenitor cells / Biomarkers / Cardiovascular regeneration
© 2013 Liu et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.