Results from clinical trials suggest that cardiac function after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) can be enhanced by an intracoronary infusion of autologous unselected nucleated bone marrow cells (BMCs). Release of paracrine factors has been proposed as a mechanism for these therapeutic effects; however, this hypothesis has not been tested in humans.

BMCs and peripheral blood leucocytes (PBLs) were obtained from 15 patients with AMI and cultured in serum-free medium to obtain conditioned supernatants (SN). BMC-SN stimulated human coronary artery endothelial cell proliferation, migration, and tube formation, and induced cell sprouting in a mouse aortic ring assay. Moreover, BMC-SN protected rat cardiomyocytes from cell death induced by simulated ischaemia or ischaemia followed by reperfusion. While PBL-SN promoted similar effects on endothelial cells and cardiomyocytes, BMC-SN and PBL-SN in combination promoted synergistic effects. As shown by ProteinChip and GeneChip array analyses (each performed in triplicate), BMCs and PBLs expressed distinct patterns of pro-angiogenic and cytoprotective secreted factors.

Our data support the paracrine hypothesis and suggest that characterization of the BMC secretome may lead to an identification of factors with therapeutic potential after AMI.