Fig. 1

General routes of influence of cardiac progenitor cells on heart regeneration after myocardial infarction. Cardiac progenitor cells may act via three main mechanisms to contribute to cardiac repair after damage. They include: direct differentiation into cardiac cells such as cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells and vascular smooth muscle cells; activation of cardiac stem cells to differentiate into different cardiac cells; and paracrine effects by which CPCs promote angiogenesis and cardioprotection while suppressing fibrosis and inflammation. Preclinical and clinical studies show that transplantation of cardiac progenitor cells and administration of their acellular products lead to improvement in functional and structural parameters of the heart after myocardial damage (Created with BioRender.com)