Background: Intravenous administration of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) has an acknowledged competence of cardiac repair, despite a lack of systematic description of the underlying biological mechanisms. The lung, but not the heart, is the main trapped site for intravenously transplanted MSCs, which leaves a spatial gap between intravenously transplanted MSCs and the injured myocardium. How lung-trapped MSCs after intravenous transplantation rejuvenate the injured myocardium remains unknown.