Mir-27b and mir-23b modulate cardiomyocyte differentiation from mouse embryonic stem cells

Abstract

Diverse types of stem cells represent a potentially attractive source of cardiac cells for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. However, most of the functional benefits reported for stem cell have been modest and mainly due to paracrine effects rather than differentiation into cardiomyocytes of the applied cells. Therefore, new tools need to be developed in order to improve the efficiency of stem cell differentiation towards specific cardiovascular lineages. Here we show that microRNAs that display early differential expression during ventricular maturation, such as miR-27b, inhibits cardiac differentiation from mouse embryonic stem cells whereas miRNAs that display late differential expression, such as miR-23b, regulates the beating phenotype during in vitro cardiac differentiation from Embryonic Stem Cells (ESCs). This study could have an impact on regenerative medicine since we showed that miR-27b and miR-23b overexpression differentially modify the ESC cell fate towards the cardiac lineage.