Pivotal advances: high-mobility group box 1 protein: a cytokine with a role in cardiac repair

Abstract: The nuclear protein high-mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) has been largely characterized for its role in inflammation. However, HMGB1 re-leased by inflammatory cells, as well as by necrotic cells, may also act as a signal of tissue damage and participate in tissue repair by recruiting stem cells to the injury site. The emergence of this function has focused the interest on HMGB1 as a molecule with an active role in tissue regeneration. We re-cently demonstrated that HMGB1 administration in a mouse model of myocardial infarction acti-vates cardiac stem cells and promotes their differ-entiation into cardiomyocytes. The regenerative effect results in the improvement of cardiac func-tion. In this review, we highlight the beneficial role of HMGB1 and discuss growth factor-based thera-peutic approaches for the treatment of myocardial infarction. J. Leukoc. Biol. 81: 000–000; 2007