How to mediate cardioprotection in ischemic hearts--accumulated evidence of basic research should translate to clinical medicine.

Ischemic heart failure is one of the leading causes of death in the western countries and it is a critical issue to overcome ischemic heart diseases for the human health care worldwide. There are several aspects of ischemic heart failure that we need to seriously consider for the conquest of cardiovascular death. First of all, we need to know either causes or pathophysiology of the onset of coronary artery disease, the ischemia/reperfusion injury and post-infarction cardiac remodeling. Secondly, we need to find the potential seeds for the molecular, pharmacological, biomedical or engineering treatment to prevent or attenuate ischemic heart diseases. Thirdly, we need to accelerate translational research and to create the network of clinical trials to grow the novel seeds to the fruitful big trees. Finally, we need to justify these strategies to overcome the ischemic heart diseases and to contribute the world welfare systems after we propose the novel therapy for the prevention and attenuation of ischemic heart diseases. The most strong and essential hypotheses to attenuate the cardiovascular injury in ischemic heart disease for last three decades are ischemic preconditioning/postconditioning. Many investigators have involved in the clarification of the characteristics of ischemic preconditioning/postconditioning and their cellular mechanisms, and the clinical applications of their basic results. Here, 8 potential basic and clinical researchers includeing us discuss these issues that they have devotedly studies for many years.