De motu cordis: the future of regenerative medicine

In this edition of the Netherlands Heart Journal Mann et al. [1] describe the results of a clinical trial that was designed to address whether autologous bone marrow-derived mononuclear cells injected by the intramyocardial route could benefit patients with heart failure. The study also investigated whether any benefits were related to patients in whom ischaemia was demonstrated (suggestive of viable myocardium) as opposed to scar. The study failed to achieve its primary end-point and has been reported as a negative study given that none of the clinical parameters appeared to improve in the cell-treated patients compared to the controls