Cryopreservation of Human Pluripotent Stem Cell-derived Cardiomyocytes is Not Detrimental to Their Molecular and Functional Properties

Overview

Journal Stem Cell Res

Publisher Elsevier

Specialty Cell Biology

Date 2020 Jan 17

PMID 31945612

Citations 20

Authors

Lettine van den Brink

Karina O Brandao

Loukia Yiangou

Mervyn P H Mol

Catarina Grandela

Christine L Mummery

Arie O Verkerk

Richard P Davis

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) have emerged as a powerful platform for in vitro modelling of cardiac diseases, safety pharmacology and drug screening. All these applications require large quantities of well-characterised and standardised batches of hiPSC-CMs. Cryopreservation of hiPSC-CMs without affecting their biochemical or biophysical phenotype is essential for facilitating this, but ideally requires the cells being unchanged by the freeze-thaw procedure. We therefore compared the in vitro functional and molecular characteristics of fresh and cryopreserved hiPSC-CMs generated from multiple independent hiPSC lines. While the frozen hiPSC-CMs exhibited poorer replating than their freshly-derived counterparts, there was no difference in the proportion of cardiomyocytes retrieved from the mixed population when this was factored in, although for several lines a higher percentage of ventricular-like hiPSC-CMs were recovered following cryopreservation. Furthermore, cryopreserved hiPSC-CMs from one line exhibited longer action potential durations. These results provide evidence that cryopreservation does not compromise the in vitro molecular, physiological and mechanical properties of hiPSC-CMs, though can lead to an enrichment in ventricular myocytes. It also validates this procedure for storing hiPSC-CMs, thereby allowing the same batch of hiPSC-CMs to be used for multiple applications and evaluations.

Citing Articles

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Systematic cryopreservation study of cardiac myoblasts in suspension.

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