Transplanted Bone Marrow Cells Repair Heart Tissue and Reduce Myocarditis in Chronic Chagasic Mice

Abstract

A progressive destruction of the myocardium occurs in approximately 30% of Trypanosoma cruzi-infected individuals, causing chronic chagasic cardiomyopathy, a disease so far without effective treatment. Syngeneic bone marrow cell transplantation has been shown to cause repair and improvement of heart function in a number of studies in patients and animal models of ischemic cardiopathy. The effects of bone marrow transplant in a mouse model of chronic chagasic cardiomyopathy, in the presence of the disease causal agent, ie, the T. cruzi, are described herein. Bone marrow cells injected intravenously into chronic chagasic mice migrated to the heart and caused a significant reduction in the inflammatory infiltrates and in the interstitial fibrosis characteristics of chronic chagasic cardiomyopathy. The beneficial effects were observed up to 6 months after bone marrow cell transplantation. A massive apoptosis of myocardial inflammatory cells was observed after the therapy with bone marrow cells. Transplanted bone marrow cells obtained from chagasic mice and from normal mice had similar effects in terms of mediating chagasic heart repair. These results show that bone marrow cell transplantation is effective for treatment of chronic chagasic myocarditis and indicate that autologous bone marrow transplant may be used as an efficient therapy for patients with chronic chagasic cardiomyopathy.

A safety and feasibility study of cell therapy in dilated cardiomyopathy

“…In preclinical models, cardiovascular stem cell therapy has been used successfully in a variety of cardiac diseases, including dilated cardiomyopathy (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9). In the clinical setting, cell therapies have been previously used in patients with ischemic heart disease, both in the acute and chronic stages.…”

Anticoagulants on yield of bone marrow-derived mononuclear cells harvested from dogs

“…In the present study, mononuclear cells were isolated according to a previous report (SOaRES et al, 2004), and has been compared the yield of bone marrow-derived mononuclear cells harvested from dogs with two different anticoagulants as well as assessed the difference in the phenotype of the isolated cells.…”

“…adult stem cells can be isolated from bone marrow and culture-expanded for therapeutic application (JIaNG at al., 2004) or used in cell therapy without prior expansion (SOaRES et al, 2004). however, stem cells isolated and expanded under different culture conditions differ in their properties and, most likely, in their therapeutic potential (PROCkOP, 2009).…”

“…adult bone marrow-derived stem cells can be obtained by density gradient centrifugation (SOaRES et al, 2004). Therefore, the total bone marrow-derived mononuclear cell fraction offers a low-cost alternative to MSC culture (BRITO et al, 2010).…”

“…Therefore, the total bone marrow-derived mononuclear cell fraction offers a low-cost alternative to MSC culture (BRITO et al, 2010). although there are some reports on the use of non-cultured cells for therapy (SOaRES et al, 2004;BRITO et al, 2010), most studies use cultureexpanded cells (JUNG et al, 2009;QUIMBY et al, 2011). Despite kaMIShINa et al (2008) estimated the frequency of canine BMSCs to be 0.0042 (±0.0019%).…”