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Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2006;30:107-108
© 2006 Elsevier Science NL

Editorial comment

Growth factor therapy grows, despite limited insight

University Hospital Freiburg, Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Hugstetter Street 55, 79106 Freiburg, Germany

^_* Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 761 270 2818; fax: +49 761 270 2550. (Email: friedhelm.beyersdorf@uniklinik-freiburg.de).

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

In this issue, Ying Liu and coworkers [1] report on the effects of slow release FGF-2 in acute myocardial infarction in dogs. The authors incorporated FGF-2 in gelatin microspheres and injected them immediately after experimental infarction into the adjacent myocardium. Functional outcome was determined using the tagged cardiac magnetic resonance imaging method at rest and under dobutamine stress. FGF-2 therapy resulted in a higher LVEF (171% and 149% of controls after 10 and 17 days, respectively) and an improved wall motility score index at rest and with dobutamine after 10 and 17 days. Congruently, a higher number of capillaries and arterioles was found (142% and 170% of controls after 10 and 17 days, respectively).

Growth factor therapy aims at restoration of regional circulation and function in ischemic myocardium and is considered a new option for patients with severe coronary disease who are currently not amenable to surgical or interventional revascularization. Various growth factors have been studied in almost multitudinous animal experiments. However, the success in clinical trials is still limited. For example, the growth factor employed in the paper, FGF-2, has been . . . [Full Text of this Article]