Stem cell therapy for heart failure: Medical breakthrough, or dead end?

Table 2 Safety parameters of various stem cell types

Cell type	Safety parameters	Ref.
ESCs	Animal models → risk of ventricular arrhythmias but no concerns of immune rejection or teratoma formation; Positive safety profile in one human clinical trial – silent alloimmunization in 3 of 6 patients	[29,30,32,37]
iPSCs	No published human clinical trials completed; Derivatives pose risk of tumorigenicity	[36,54]
CSCs	Heavily compromised field of research due to lack of scientific integrity; Suggestions in positive safety profile of CDCs	[40,42]
BMDSCs	Positive safety profile demonstrated in allogeneic and autologous human clinical trials; Easy to harvest; Decrease in arrhythmogenic risk; Noteworthy increase in adverse events → CARDIO133 trial	[43,44,46,48,50]
MSCs	Positive safety profile demonstrated in multiple human clinical trials; Dyspnea, fatigue and chest tightness 1-mo post-transplantation, though small sample	[54-61]
SMs	Risk of ventricular arrhythmias	[68]

CSCs: Cardiac stem cells; iPSCs: Induced pluripotent cells; ESCs: Embryonic stem cells; MSCs: Mesenchymal stem cells; BMDSCs: Bone marrow-derived stem cells; BMMNCs: Bone marrow mononuclear cells; CDCs: Cardiosphere-derived cell; SMs: Skeletal myoblasts.