Regenerative medicine is considered as a key technology of the present and future medicine, with potential new therapies for cardiovascular, skin, neurological, and many other diseases. Majority of the cardiovascular regeneration research focussed on ischemic heart diseases, but it should encompass also other cardiovascular disorders, such as oncologic treatment-induced cardiotoxicity, or congenital and metabolic heart diseases or brain-heart axis repair.
This study program focuses on cardiovascular tissue pathologies and aims to elaborate methods for tissue regeneration and repair in this context. In the last twenty years, some evolutionary breakthrough in tissue regeneration could be achieved, including the development of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), identification of essential characteristics of regenerative cell types, development of cardiac organoids, tissue engineerimng and 3D printing. Beyond cell-based cardiac repair technology, regenerative medicine involves also the application of cell-free materials such as secretomes of regenerative cells, extracellular vesicles (EVs), growth factors, non-coding RNAs and gene therapies, biomaterials and several types of engineered tissues.
Regenerative medicine can be divided into two complementary strategies:
1) stimulation of the endogenous repair mechanisms by applied therapeutics (eg. synthetic or biologically derived factors, genetic and epigenetic modifications) or interventions (eg. ischemic conditioning, cardioprotection), and
2) exogenous regeneration modes through use of cells, tissues, or other biotechnological products, such as advanced therapy medicinal products, ATMPs. In contrast to pre-clinical data, human cardiac regenerative therapies led to a moderate success in improvement of cardiac performance, reduction of infarct size, prevention of left ventricular remodeling and decreased mortality and cardiovascular morbidity. Therefore, it is fundamental to understand the underlying biological mechanisms and translate the therapeutic efficacy gained in pre- clinical experiments to human conditions.