Professor of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery，University of Paris Descartes，Professor, School of Engineering，University of Alabama at Birmingham

Dr. Menasché has a long-standing interest in stem cells for the treatment of heart failure. He focuses on combination of cardiac progenitors derived from ESCs with a tissue engineering-based construct. The first-in-man trial testing this cell-loaded patch and primarily focused on feasibility and safety has now been successfully completed. In parallel, mechanistic studies have unraveled the predominant role of paracrine signaling and its mediation by cell-secreted extracellular vesicles. Consequently, his group is now shifting its research towards a-cellular cell therapy based on the exclusive use of these extracellular vesicles (isolated from pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiac progenitor cells) with the objective of further streamlining the clinical translatability of this myocardial repair strategy.