A half-metal is an ideal spin source to realize extremely large magnetoresistance effects because of the completely spin-polarized density of states at the Fermi level, and Heusler alloy is a material class for which several compositions are known to exhibit half-metallic properties. Current perpendicular-to-plane (CPP) giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect is a resistance change that depends upon the relative angle of the magnetization vectors in magnetic layers separated by thin nonmagnetic layer(s), which can be utilized for magnetic sensor applications. Over the last decade, the resistance change of CPP-GMR has been found to enhance greatly when using half-metallic Heusler alloys. In this article, the history of Heusler alloy based CPP-GMR is briefly reviewed, including the authors' recent results on the analysis of the spin asymmetry coefficients based on the Valet-Fert model. Finally, the degradation of half-metallic spin polarization at interfaces is discussed and a future prospect is described.