Advanced Maturation of Human Cardiac Tissue Grown from Pluripotent Stem Cells

Overview

Journal Nature

Specialty Science

Date 2018 Apr 6

PMID 29618819

Citations 567

Authors

Kacey Ronaldson-Bouchard

Stephen P Ma

Keith Yeager

Timothy Chen

LouJin Song

Dario Sirabella

Kumi Morikawa

Diogo Teles

Masayuki Yazawa

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Cardiac tissues generated from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can serve as platforms for patient-specific studies of physiology and disease. However, the predictive power of these models is presently limited by the immature state of the cells. Here we show that this fundamental limitation can be overcome if cardiac tissues are formed from early-stage iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes soon after the initiation of spontaneous contractions and are subjected to physical conditioning with increasing intensity over time. After only four weeks of culture, for all iPSC lines studied, such tissues displayed adult-like gene expression profiles, remarkably organized ultrastructure, physiological sarcomere length (2.2 µm) and density of mitochondria (30%), the presence of transverse tubules, oxidative metabolism, a positive force-frequency relationship and functional calcium handling. Electromechanical properties developed more slowly and did not achieve the stage of maturity seen in adult human myocardium. Tissue maturity was necessary for achieving physiological responses to isoproterenol and recapitulating pathological hypertrophy, supporting the utility of this tissue model for studies of cardiac development and disease.

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