ABSTRACT
Despite the precipitous drop in death rates from heart attacks and strokes during the past decades, cardiovascular disease still exceeds all other causes of death in the USA. It is estimated that 12.6 million Americans alive today have coronary heart disease and more than one million people will suffer a heart attack every year. Restoring bloodflow, improving perfusion, reducing clinical symptoms and augmenting ventricular function are the common treatments after acute myocardial infarction. With longer life-expectancy for the US population, a further increase is anticipated for cardiovascular disease. Other than replacing the whole heart (cardiac transplantation), no standard clinical procedure is available to restore or regenerate the damaged myocardium following a heart attack.
