The use of heart-delivered cell culture labeled with luciferase expression for optimisation of the intramyocardial transplantation protocol

The use of heart-delivered cell culture (HCC) is one of promising directions of therapy of ischemic heart injury. The success of cell therapy depends of efficiency of cell delivery and its homing to injury area. Application of the phenomenon of bioluminescence for transplanted cells homing monitoring is a very convenient and sparing method which permits to assess a condition of cells dynamically using only one animal. A linear correlation between luciferase activity and cell number was shown. That fact allows to assess HCC transplantation and homing efficiency depending on luciferase activity in cells quantitatively. Different ways of intramyocardial transplantation were compared and it was shown that cell injection in fibrin gel composition promote more effective consolidation of cells in the zone of transplantation.