Loss of terminally differentiated cardiomyocytes due to heart disease is 
irreversible and current therapeutic regimes are limited. Cell therapy using 
stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes is an attractive option to repair injured 
hearts. The discovery of direct reprogramming of fibroblasts into induced 
pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and successful differentiation of iPSCs into 
cardiomyocytes provided a revolutionary paradigm in heart regenerative research. 
During the past decades, significant advances in stem cell culture, 
differentiation and purification protocols, as well as in cell transplantation 
methodologies, have been achieved. On the other hand, recent studies 
demonstrated that a somatic cell could be converted into an alternative 
differentiated cell type without first becoming a stem cell by overexpression of 
lineage-specific factors. We found that functional cardiomyocytes can be 
directly induced from fibroblasts by a combination of three cardiac 
transcription factors, Gata4, Mef2c and Tbx5, in vitro and in vivo. I will 
review the perspectives of heart regeneration using reprogramming technology.