About the Authors

Makoto Matsuyama

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

m.matsuyama@metcela.com

Affiliation Research & Development Department, Metcela Inc., Kanagawa, Japan

Takahiro Iwamiya

Roles Funding acquisition

Affiliations Research & Development Department, Metcela Inc., Kanagawa, Japan, Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, Yamagata, Japan, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan

Competing Interests

I have read the journal’s policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: Takahiro Iwamiya is a cofounder and co-CEO of Metcela, Inc., and he has ownership of stocks. The corresponding author is an employee of Metcela. Takahiro Iwamiya has the authority to make payment decisions regarding employee salaries. Metcela is a company that develops VCAM1-expressing cardiac fibroblasts (VCFs) as a therapy for ischemic heart diseases. Additionally, Metcela applied for the following patents: Inventor: Takahiro Iwamiya. Assignee: Metcela Inc. Title: Composition For Injection Which Can Be Used For Treatment Of Heart Diseases And Contains Fibroblasts, And Method For Producing Fibroblast For Therapy Use. International application number: PCT/JP2018/006795. An object of the present invention is to present VCFs as a method that has not been established yet and that is useful for achieving long-term and fundamental cure of a necrotic cardiac tissue region to allow recovery of heart function. The funder provided support in the form of salary for author [MM], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. The authors declare a commercial affiliation with Metcela, Inc. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.