With this volume results become generally available of a recent conference that was the first to discuss properties of isolated heart muscle cells from the adult myocardium as a new cardio­ logical research tool. The conference was held as an International Erwin Riesch Symposium un­ der the auspices of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fUr Herz- und Kreislaufforschung at Spangenberg Castle, March 22-25, 1984. It was made possible through funding by the Erwin Riesch Foun­ dation and the Bayer AG which deserve our gratitude for their generosity. It may not be fully reflected in this collection of papers that the atmosphere of this meeting was unique. The reason for this resided apparently in the still rudimentary experiences with the adult cardiocyte model that is now widely acknowledged to be very promising. Thus, quite basic inter­ ests brought together experts from different biological disciplines who in respect to this new mod­ el were all still "beginners". It was noteworthy that such common interests exerted a unifying effect upon otherwise rather separated fields of science. The main task of the years to come will certainly consist in improving isolation and culturing conditions for adult myocytes in order to fully establish the isolated cell model in heart research.