Patent ID: 8772030

Claim:
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.