CXCL12 and myocardial infarction: SDF-1α is known to play a central role in stem cell homing, retention, survival, proliferation, cardiomyocyte repair, angiogenesis and ventricular remodelling following myocardial infarction (Kucia, Dawn, et al., 2004, Cheng et al., 2008, Saxena et al., 2008, Tang et al., 2009, Zaruba et al., 2009, Jujo et al., 2010, Takahashi, 2010, Tang et al., 2010, Zaruba and Franz, 2010, Ghadge et al., 2011, Kanki et al., 2011, Dong et al., 2012, Penn et al., 2012).