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  5. Stem cell advance yields mature heart muscle cells

Stem cell advance yields mature heart muscle cells

mature heart muscle cells

An image of cardiomyocytes cultured on the UW-Madison researchers' micropatterned substrates. The image shows a distinct structure forming within individual cells, as well as a more physiologically relevant tissue morphology. Image: Max Salick.

A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has induced human embryonic stem cells (hESC) to differentiate toward pure-population, mature heart muscle cells, or cardiomyocytes. A substrate patterned with a precisely sized series of channels played a critical role in the advance.

Published online February 28, 2014, in the journal Biomaterials, the research could open the door to advances in areas that include tissue engineering and drug discovery and testing.



immature heart muscle cells on a standard substrate

An image of cardiomyocytes cultured in standard culture conditions. The cardiomyocytes have poorly organized sarcomere formation and cell alignment. Image: Max Salick. 

Recently, three-dimensional and micropatterned substrates have emerged as more accurately mimicking the cells' physiological environment. However, the majority of previous research studies using patterning were conducted using cells from rats, says Max Salick, a PhD student in materials science at UW-Madison and first author on the paper. "One of the unique aspects of our research is that it observes human cardiomyocytes' response to micropatterning geometries," he says.


The researchers' micropatterned substrate consists of a series of lanes, or channels. When they put the cells into the lanes, they saw a clear differences in how the cells responded to various lane sizes—and identifying the optimal size scale was key. "If the lane was too wide, the cells weren't really able to 'feel' their lane, so they didn't align as well," says Salick. "But with lanes less than 100 microns wide, we really started to see the alignment, a stronger sarcomere structure and a more mature phenotype."



Renee Meiller