Phenotype and developmental potential of cardiomyocytes from induced pluripotent stem cells and human embryonic stem cells

Abstract

The adult human heart has limited regenerative capacity. Loss of -myocardium, most commonly through ischemic injury, results in the clinical syndrome of heart failure. Current therapies are largely palliative and the only treatment for end-stage heart failure with established long-term efficacy is transplantation. Consequently, there has been significant interest in developing novel regenerative strategies. Use of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) therapy is complicated by ethical and technical problems including possible host immune rejection of transplanted cells. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) share many properties with hESC but do not require the ethically problematic destruction of embryos. Furthermore, as iPSC can be generated from somatic cells of specific patients, it is theoretically possible to perform allogenic cell transplantation or to create patient-specific in vitro disease models using iPSC-derived cardiac myocytes. In this chapter, we discuss the developmental potential of hESC and iPSC for cardiomyogenesis, including existing methods for differentiation and maturation.