“…Beginning more than 15 years ago with the use of unipotent myogenic precursor cells from skeletal muscle [57,58] and terminally differentiated cardiomyocytes [57,58], heart cell therapy has progressed to the use of multipotent and pluripotent stem and progenitor cells [22,30,59,63,80,86,105,108,112,122]. Despite extensive experimental animal studies and a decade-long clinical assessment of stem and progenitor cells to regenerate the damaged myocardium [25,34,36], the choice of donor stem and progenitor cells and transplantation protocols for optimal prognosis still remain the focal issue in the use of stem cells for cardiac repair. Although various cell types have been assessed for their safety, feasibility, and efficacy, the discovery of the presence of resident cardiac stem and progenitor cells and their successful isolation and propagation in vitro for transplantation has significantly moved the field of stem cell research [8,82].…”