Myocardial infarction leads to the loss of a huge number of cardiomyocytes and the reparatory response to this phenomenon is scar tissue formation, which impairs heart function. Direct reprogramming technology offers an alternative strategy for the generation of functional cardiomyocytes not only in vitro, but also in vivo in the site of injury. Results have demonstrated cardiac tissue regeneration and improvement in heart function after myocardial infarction following local injection of vectors encoding reprogramming transcription factors or miRNAs. This shows the great potential of cardiac reprogramming technology for heart regeneration. However, in addition to cardiomyocytes, other cell types, including endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells are also required to be generated in the damaged area in order to achieve complete cardiac tissue regeneration. To this aim induced proliferative/expandable cardiovascular progenitor cells (iCPCs) appear to be an appropriate cell source, which is capable of differentiation into three cardiovascular lineages both in vitro and in vivo. In this regard, this study goes over in vitro and in vivo cardiac reprogramming technology and specifically deals with cardiac progenitor reprogramming and its potential for heart regeneration.
Keywords: CASD, cell-activation and signaling-directed; Cellular reprogramming; ECs, endothelial cells; FGF, fibroblast growth factor; GMT, Gata4, Mef2c, and Tbx5; Heart regeneration; Myocardial infarction; PI3K/AKT, phosphoinositol 3-kinase pathway; SMCs, smooth muscle cells; TF, transcription factor; Transdifferentiation; VEGF, vascular endothelial growth factor; iCMs, induced cardiomyocytes; iCPCs, induced cardiac progenitor cells; iCSs, induced cardiospheres; iPSC, induced pluripotent stem cell; p38 MAPK, p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway.