Cardiac regenerative therapy in diabetes: Challenges and potential therapeutics

Diabetes mellitus (DM) increases the risk of myocardial infarction (MI). MI causes myocardial cell death, which is a permanent damage that impairs cardiac function. The heart has limited potential to regenerate myocardium. Regenerative therapy provides a promising approach to replenish death myocardium following by MI. Several types of cells, including stem cells, and paracrine factors have been used for cardiac repair in the non-DM MI heart. They have demonstrated encouraging results in preclinical studies. However, the DM heart differs from the non-DM heart both at the metabolic and microenvironment levels. There is a gap-in-knowledge of specific approaches needed for cardiac regeneration in the DM MI heart. Here, we elaborated the currently used approaches for cardiac regeneration, their limitations in cardiac repair in the DM MI heart, and potential avenues for myocardial regeneration in the DM MI heart.