Stem cell therapy in pulmonary arterial hypertension: current practice
and future opportunities
Abstract
Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a chronic disease that is
characterized as mean pulmonary artery hypertension (mPAP)
> 25 mmHg. PAH is caused by progressive obliteration of
small pulmonary arteries due to known or unknown etiologies. The effect
of traditional therapy is suboptimal because it can only improve
symptoms but cannot cure the disease, and therefore, scientists have
turned their attention to stem cell therapy for efficacious treatments.
In recent years, accumulating evidences have demonstrated that
endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)
are closely related with the occurrence of PAH and have the ability to
prevent and reverse this disease. In this review, we turn our attention
to a novel therapy for PAH, stem cell therapy, through comparing effect
of preclinical research on cells and animals and evaluating the
feasibility and potential difficulties of clinical application.