2013•PubMedOpen access
Clinical Application of Endothelial Progenitor Cell: Are We Ready?
Chao Hung Wang, Po Hsun Huang, Jaw Wen Chen, Shing Jong Lin, Ming-Feng Lee, Ning I. Yang, Wen Jin Cherng
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Abstract
UNLABELLED: The discovery of circulating endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) opened up a new era of EPC-based therapies for cardiovascular diseases. While researchers are enthusiastic about applying EPCs to clinical therapy, progress has been substantially limited due to the lack of a thorough characterization and understanding of early and late outgrowth EPCs (also called endothelial colony-forming cell, ECFCs) biology. As a means of facilitating the understanding of how late EPCs can most effectively be applied to clinical therapeutics, this article reviews the recent progress covering 5 important issues: (1) The best passages of ex vivo-cultivated EPCs for cell therapy; (2) inflammatory activation of late EPCs: a real world consideration; (3) late EPC is not an endothelial cell: an issue of cell contamination; (4) ways to improve EPC function and differentiation; and (5) how to separate and delete smooth muscle progenitor cells (SPCs). KEY WORDS: Cardiovascular disease; Cell therapy; Endothelial progenitor cell; Smooth muscle progenitor cell.