With the development of regenerative medicine, stem cell based therapy is promising for the treatment of clinical diseases. Stem cells are multipotent and capable for self-renewal. They play important roles in tissue homeostasis and regeneration. Currently, considerable work has been focused on exogenous stem cells transplantation therapy; but most allogeniec cells suffer apoptosis or necrosis after transplantation due to immunoreaction and unsuitable environments. Thus autologous stem cells are safer for the repair of injured tissues. How to use autologous stem cells effectively? Dai’s group at Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has developed a kind of collagen scaffold capable of capturing stem-cells which could enrich stem cells effectively in vivo. When the functional collagen scaffold was transplanted into C57/BL6 mouse as a patch to repair surgical heart defect, the regeneration of cardiomyocytes had been observed. Professor Dai believed that autologous stem cells were the safest for stem cell based therapy, and the functional collagen scaffold can not only applied for the repair of injured myocardium but also be used for the regeneration of skin, nerve, bone and so on.

This work was conducted by Ph D candidate Shi Chunying in Dai’s group and Ph D candidate Li Qingguo in Cardiothoracic Surgery Department of Nanjing Tower Hospital, and published on Biomaterials（ doi:10.1016/j.biomaterials.2010.12.026）as first co-author.