A. List of abbreviations
B. Summary
C. Introduction
C.1. Seeking stem cells desperately
C.2. Embryonic stem cells (ESC)
C.3. No stem cells in the heart?
C.4. Cell therapy of the heart
C.4.1. ESC into the heart
C.4.2. Human ESC
C.4.3. Skeletal muscle cells into the heart
C.4.4. Bone Marrow stem cells
D. Material and methods
D.1. ESC culture and differentiation
D.2. Isolation of ES-derived and neonatal mouse cardiomyocytes
D.3. Plasmid construction, stable transfection and isolation of ESC clones
D.4. Rat model of myocardial infarction
D.5. Experimental animal protocol
D.6. The transplantation Procedure
D.7. Immunosuppression treatment
D.8. Evaluation of the left ventricular function by echocardiography
D.9. Histological and immunohistochemistry study
D.9.1. Antibodies
D.9.2. Immunohistochemistry
D.10. Statistics Analysis
E. Results
E.1. Grafting undifferentiated ESC in normal (non-infarcted) heart
E.2. Rat model of myocardial infarction (MI)
E.3. Engraftment of undifferentiated ESC in acute phase of MI (1 week)
E.4. Grafting of undifferentiated ESC in chronic phase of MI (4 weeks)
E. 5. Grafting of ESC-derived CMC in MI rats.
E.6. Effect of time and immunosuppression on teratoma formation
E.7. The evaluation of left ventricular function by echocardiogram
F. Discussion
G. Conclusions
H. Implementation and future experiments
I. Annexe - Reprints
J. Annexe - Acknowledgments
K. References