A three-dimensional culture system for generating cardiac spheroids composed of cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells, smooth-muscle cells, and cardiac fibroblasts derived from human induced-pluripotent stem cells

oleh: Asher Kahn-Krell, Danielle Pretorius, Bijay Guragain, Xi Lou, Yuhua Wei, Jianhua Zhang, Jianhua Zhang, Aijun Qiao, Yuji Nakada, Timothy J. Kamp, Timothy J. Kamp, Timothy J. Kamp, Lei Ye, Jianyi Zhang, Jianyi Zhang

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-07-01

Deskripsi

Cardiomyocytes (CMs), endothelial cells (ECs), smooth-muscle cells (SMCs), and cardiac fibroblasts (CFs) differentiated from human induced-pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) are the fundamental components of cell-based regenerative myocardial therapy and can be used as in-vitro models for mechanistic studies and drug testing. However, newly differentiated hiPSC-CMs tend to more closely resemble fetal CMs than the mature CMs of adult hearts, and current techniques for improving CM maturation can be both complex and labor-intensive. Thus, the production of CMs for commercial and industrial applications will require more elementary methods for promoting CM maturity. CMs tend to develop a more mature phenotype when cultured as spheroids in a three-dimensional (3D) environment, rather than as two-dimensional monolayers, and the activity of ECs, SMCs, and CFs promote both CM maturation and electrical activity. Here, we introduce a simple and reproducible 3D-culture–based process for generating spheroids containing all four cardiac-cell types (i.e., cardiac spheroids) that is compatible with a wide range of applications and research equipment. Subsequent experiments demonstrated that the inclusion of vascular cells and CFs was associated with an increase in spheroid size, a decline in apoptosis, an improvement in sarcomere maturation and a change in CM bioenergetics.