Chronic critical limb ischemia (CLI) represents an end-stage manifestation of peripheral arterial disease (PAD). CLI patients are at very high risk of amputation and cardiovascular complications, leading to severe morbidity and mortality. Because many patients with CLI are ineligible for conventional revascularization procedures, it is urgently needed to explore alternative strategies to improve blood supply in the ischemic tissue. Although researchers initially focused on gene/protein therapy using proangiogenic growth factors/cytokines, recent discovery of somatic stem/progenitor cells including bone marrow (BM)-derived endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) has drastically developed the field of therapeutic angiogenesis for CLI. Overall, early phase clinical trials demonstrated that stem/progenitor cell therapies may be safe, feasible and potentially effective. However, only few late-phase clinical trials have been conducted. This review provides an overview of the preclinical and clinical reports to demonstrate the usefulness and the current limitations of the cell-based therapies.

慢性重症肢体缺血（CLI）代表末梢动脉疾病（PAD）的终末期表现。CLI患者截肢和心血管并发症的风险很高，导致严重的发病率和死亡率。由于许多CLI患者没有资格进行常规的血运重建手术，因此迫切需要探索替代策略以改善缺血组织的血液供应。尽管研究人员最初专注于使用促血管生成生长因子/细胞因子进行基因/蛋白质治疗，但最近发现的体干/祖细胞包括骨髓（BM）衍生的内皮祖细胞（EPC）和间充质干细胞（MSC） CLI的治疗性血管生成研究。全面的，早期临床试验表明，干/祖细胞疗法可能是安全，可行且潜在有效的。但是，仅进行了很少的后期临床试验。这篇综述提供了临床前和临床报告的概述，以证明基于细胞的疗法的有用性和当前的局限性。