Researchers make cardiomyocyte breakthrough

2015/10/29

A local research team recently revealed a new method of inducing the maturation of human and mouse stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes, or cardiac muscle cells, which may help hasten the development of stem cell-based therapies and personalized medicine.

Led by Patrick C.H. Hsieh, a research fellow at the Institute of Biomedical Science of Taipei City-based Academia Sinica, the study was featured as the cover story in the Sept. 29 issue of the U.S. journal Cell Reports.

According to the study’s lead author Desy Lee, a doctoral student at National Cheng Kung University in Tainan City, cardiovascular diseases and cancer are some of the leading causes of death around the world.

“Patients who suffer heart attacks or undergo chemotherapy all face the risk of heart failure due to dead or weakened cardiomyocytes. Therefore, a large number of such cells are needed for drug screening and examination,” Lee said.

One of the greatest obstacles faced by researchers is that induced cardiomyocytes are generally immature and tend to display the structural and functional attributes of fetal cells, and are thus unreliable for disease modeling or therapeutic research, she added.

By using a defined combination of four microRNAs and technology developed through collaboration with biomedical scientists at the University of Washington, the team was able to maturate mouse cardiomyocytes in three days and human ones in 21 days, with a combined efficiency rate of 80 percent.

“While so far no technique, including ours, is able to fully imitate the adult cardiomyocyte phenotype, we hope our findings can improve the usefulness of these cells in a variety of applications and inspire more studies employing a similar approach,” Lee said.

Source: Taiwan Today (http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=238284&ctNode=2194&mp=9)