Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) offer an unprecedented opportunity for both disease modeling and personalized medicine. In particular, PSC derived cardiomyocytes (CM) mature into adult cardiomyocytes when transplanted into neonatal rat hearts allowing iPSC modeling of cardiomyopathy. A recent published study by Kwong et al ¹ shows the successful isolation of cardiac progenitor cells (CPCs) from mouse embryonic stem cells. To achieve this, a mESC line expressing Isl1-Cre; Rosa-RFP; aMHC-GFP was generated. The expression of Rosa-RFP allowed tracking of CPCs destined to mature into CM. RFP+ CPCs were sorted using the Sony SH800 cell sorter using the 130um microfluidics sorting chip.

The growth and cell health of these sorted cells was monitored in-vitro by microscopy prior to injecting them in nude mice. All sorted cells were viable and differentiated into adult CMs in the model animal.

Such an approach may be extended for generating other types of adult cells prone to disease, such as skeletal muscle cells, pancreatic cells, and renal cells, from hiPSCs to study and model adult-onset human diseases.

References

Cho GS, et al. "Neonatal Transplantation Confers Maturation of PSC-Derived Cardiomyocytes Conducive to Modeling Cardiomyopathy." Cell Rep. 2017, 18: 571–582. PubMed