Cardiac stem cells and methods for isolation of same

A method for obtaining cardiospheres from a cardiac tissue biopsy sample, said method comprising the following steps:

• fragmenting a cardiac tissue biopsy sample to generate a plurality of cardiac tissue fragments;
• wherein the cardiac tissue biopsy sample is a non-embryonic cardiac tissue obtained from the ventricle, atrium or auricle of a heart;
• removing non-cardiac tissue or non-cardiac cells from said cardiac tissue fragments by partial enzymatic digestion of said cardiac tissue fragments;
• discarding said non-cardiac tissue or non-cardiac cells and retaining said partially digested cardiac tissue fragments;
• culturing said partially digested cardiac tissue fragments until phase-bright cells migrate from said cardiac tissue fragments;
• collecting said phase-bright cells;
• culturing said phase-bright cells on a treated surface in a culture media comprising 3.5% serum to generate one or more cardiospheres;
• wherein the one or more cardiospheres are spheroid structure of about 20 μm to about 150 μm in culture,
• wherein said cardiospheres are multicellular aggregates comprising stem cells, cardiac cells, and endothelial cells,
• wherein said stem cells express one or more stem cell markers selected from the group consisting of CD-34, ckit, and sca-1 within 12 hours of said cardiospheres being generated,
• wherein said endothelial cells express one or more endothelial markers selected from the group consisting of KDR, flk-1 and CD31 within 12 hours of said cardiospheres being generated;
• and
• harvesting said one or more cardiospheres, thereby obtaining cardiospheres.