Donor, Autologous Stem Cells Equally Safe for Cardiomyopathy

The major finding of the POSEIDON trial is that transcardial allogeneic stem-cell therapy appears to be as safe and at least as effective as autologous stem-cell therapy, which is encouraging, said Dr. Eduardo Marban and Dr. Konstantinos Malliaras.

"By inference, POSEIDON illustrates that rejection of allogeneic cells may not matter if the cells survive long enough to trigger a regenerative cascade, resulting in sustained benefit despite evanescent cell survival," they noted.

Dr. Marban and Dr. Malliaras are at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, Los Angeles. Dr. Marban reported being a founder of Capricor, a developer of cardiac stem-cell treatments; both he and Dr. Malliaras reported financial ties to Capricor. These remarks were taken from their editorial accompanying Dr. Hare’s report (JAMA 2012 Nov. 6 [doi:10.1001/jama.2012.64751]).