Abstract 707: Genetically Modified Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) Overexpressing Chemokine Receptor CCR1 Improves Cellular Engraftment and Tissue Repair of Ischemic myocardium

Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs) may promote structural and functional repair in the myocardium following acute myocardial infarction (MI). However, the cytotactic factors/receptors responsible for MSC engraftment to the injured myocardial tissue have not been fully elucidated. Chemokines, important agents controlling cell locomotion and trafficking, are upregulated in the heart following MI and have been implicated in regulating engraftment and homing of MSCs to infarcted tissue. We hypothesized that over expression of certain chemokine receptors in MSCs will augment cell engraftment of injected MSCs in infarcted tissue. Our previous experiments indicated that CCL7(/MCP3) and SDF-1 expression was upregulated in infarcted myocardium. However, the level of expression of receptors corresponding to these chemokines in MSCs is low. In this study, we retrovirally transduced murine BM-MSCs with CCR1 or CXCR4 (receptors for CCL7 and SDF-1, respectively) genes under the control of the constitu...