Ischemic heart failure (IHF) secondary to myocardial infarction is a common, lethal, disabling, and expensive condition. Despite advances over the last 30 years, the prognosis of patients with IHF remains poor. At present, there has been increasing interest in attempting to repair the failing heart with the use of stem cells, since this approach has the potential to regenerate dead myocardium and thus alleviate the underlying cause of IHF.~A very primitive population of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) has been isolated from a continuum from the sub-amnion to perivascular region of umbilical cord, referred to as Wharton's jelly-derived MSCs (WJMSCs). WJMSCs retain a combination of most of their embryonic stem cell (ESC) and MSC markers in primary culture and early passages, thus retaining their multipotent stem cell characteristics. Preclinical studies have demonstrated that WJMSCs can be induced to differentiate into cardiomyocytes and endothelial cells and to integrate into the vasculature and ischemic cardiac tissue, as well as to improve heart function significantly. Therefore, the investigators performed a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, randomly assigning 160 patients with ischemic heart failure secondary to myocardial infarction to receive an intracoronary or intravenous infusion of WJMSCs or placebo, to investigate the therapeutic safety and efficacy of WJMSCs in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the safety and efficacy of intracoronary or intravenous infusion human umbilical Wharton's jelly-derived Mesenchymal Stem Cell (WJMSC) in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy secondary to myocardial infarction.