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(Circulation Research. 2004;94:132.)
© 2004 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorials

Some Like It Plastic

Annarosa Leri, Jan Kajstura, Bernardo Nadal-Ginard, Piero Anversa

From the Department of Medicine, Cardiovascular Research Institute, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY.

Correspondence to Annarosa Leri, MD, or Piero Anversa, MD, Cardiovascular Research Institute, Vosburgh Pavilion, Room 302, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY 10595. E-mail annarosa_leri@nymc.edu; piero_anversa@nymc.edu

Key Words: transdifferentiation • fusion • cardiac repair • regenerative medicine

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

The artist,..., like the thinker or the scientist, seeks the truth and makes his appeal."¹ The artist, however, enjoys a superior level of freedom and in doing so he "must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, to the color of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music." Plasticity is the foundation of the Manifesto of the Futurist Sculpture²: "the Futurist sculptor perceives the body and its parts as plastic zones, and will introduce into the sculptural composition twenty different materials, provided that the plastic emotion requires it." As in the case of the radical position of Boccioni, the discovery that the body contains plastic cells, ie, cells with the ability to change into another cell type, has created skepticism, excitement, surprise, and disbelief. Because of controversial findings, which are at times impossible to reconcile,^3–7 the painful process of understanding and reaching a consensus has been difficult and is not completed yet. Cells during prenatal development undergo a hierarchical progressive restriction of developmental options. This process was thought to be irreversible and inviolable in adulthood. However, several examples of transition from one cell type to another or, even more unexpectedly, from one cell lineage to a different lineage have challenged this paradigm.^8–11 Such a condition is described in the study by Planat-Bénard and collaborators in this issue of Circulation Research,¹² in which multipotent stromal cells isolated from adipose tissue differentiate spontaneously into cardiac myocytes in vitro.

Some confusion in terminology has certainly contributed to the heated debate . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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