Narasimman Gurusamy

1. Introduction Living heart tissue slices have recently gained momentum as a powerful tool in cardiac research. Ultrathin sections prepared from living ventricular myocardium, heart slices retain native cardiac tissue multicellularity, extracellular matrix, cell-cell contacts, electrophysiology, and contractility, while maintaining the simplicity of an isolated, controlled environment system (1, 2).

Introduction Cell therapy has been extensively investigated as a potential treatment to improve left ventricle (LV) function after acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Different cell types have entered the experimental arena, but most studies have used bone marrow-derived cells (BMCs) (1). Unfortunately, the impressive biological effects observed in small animal models have not been consistently reproduced in clinical trials.