Cardiovascular repair and regeneration 2008: the fourth International Conference on Cell Therapy for Cardiovascular Disease (IC3D).

The principal lessons and take-home points from IC3D are: 1) clinical trials are in an expansion stage, being constructed upon the substantial foundation of the international experience of the last 6-7 years, and now looking at hard clinical endpoints, 2) catheter-based cell-delivery is likely to be the mainstay of clinical trials and, in time, clinical practice, 3) the coming year will bring light to techniques for enhancing cell function (autologous or allogeneic), improving tissue receptivity to cell delivery and facilitating the performance catheter-based procedures. While the role of cell-therapy in clinical practice is yet to be established, signals from existing data indicate that engagement of the interventional cardiology community in this field should be expanded.