Adult heart turnover

Adult stem cell populations are critical to maintain tissue function and, therefore, balanced self-renewal/differentiation, and the prevention of senescence are thus critical for tissue homeostasis. The group work in the study of several adult stem cells, including stem cells derived form bone marrow, mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) and, more recently, cardiac progenitor cells. Our contribution helped to define that conventional ex vivo culture conditions promotes a significant and unexpected senescence of the culture, involving aneuploidy.This knowledge could help in the feature to correlate the therapeutic activity observed with the biological profile of the transplanted cells, to develop more clear and solid concepts on biosafety. In addition, we have defined a subpopulation of the murine Sca1 non-myocytic cells, characterized by high level of expression of Bmi1 (B-CPC) that contains bona fide cardiac stem cells. The group has continued characterizing relevant functions.