A Brief Review of Current Maturation Methods for Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells-Derived Cardiomyocytes

The evolution of gene expression in mammalian organ development remains largely uncharacterized. Here we report the transcriptomes of seven organs (cerebrum, cerebellum, heart, kidney, liver, ovary and testis) across developmental time points from early organogenesis to adulthood for human, macaque, mouse, rat, rabbit, opossum and chicken. Comparisons of gene expression patterns identified developmental stage correspondences across species, and differences in the timing of key events during the development of the gonads. We found that the breadth of gene expression and the extent of purifying selection gradually decrease during development, whereas the amount of positive selection and expression of new genes increase. We identified differences in the temporal trajectories of expression of individual genes across species, with brain tissues showing the smallest percentage of trajectory changes, and the liver and testis showing the largest. Our work provides a resource of developmental transcriptomes of seven organs across seven species, and comparative analyses that characterize the development and evolution of mammalian organs.

Dramatic maturational changes occur in cardiac energy metabolism during cardiac development, differentiation, and postnatal growth. These changes in energy metabolism have important impacts on the ability of the cardiomyocyte to proliferate during early cardiac development, as well as when cardiomyocytes terminally differentiate during later development. During early cardiac development, glycolysis is a major source of energy for proliferating cardiomyocytes. As cardiomyocytes mature and become terminally differentiated, mitochondrial oxidative capacity increases, with fatty acid beta-oxidation becoming a major source of energy for the heart. The increase in mitochondrial oxidative capacity seems to coincide with a decrease in the proliferative ability of the cardiomyocyte. The switch from glycolysis to mitochondrial oxidative metabolism during cardiac development includes both alterations in the transcriptional control and acute alterations in the control of each pathway. Interestingly, if a hypertrophic stress is placed on the adult heart, cardiac energy metabolism switches to a more fetal phenotype, which includes an increase in glycolysis and decrease in mitochondrial fatty acid beta-oxidation. In this article, we review the impact of alterations in energy substrate metabolism on cardiomyocyte proliferation, differentiation, and postnatal maturation.

Cellular reprogramming of somatic cells to patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) enables in-vitro modelling of human genetic disorders for pathogenic investigations and therapeutic screens 1–7 . However, using iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs) to model an adult-onset heart disease remains challenging due to the uncertainty regarding the ability of relatively immature iPSC-CMs to fully recapitulate adult disease phenotypes. Arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia/cardiomyopathy (ARVD/C) is an inherited heart disease characterized by pathological fatty infiltration and cardiomyocyte loss predominantly in the right ventricle (RV) 8 , which is associated with life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias. Over 50% of affected individuals have desmosome gene mutations, most commonly in PKP2 encoding plakophilin-2 9 . The median age at presentation of ARVD/C is 26 years 8 . We used Yamanaka’s methods 1,10 to generate iPSC lines from fibroblasts of two patients with ARVD/C and PKP2 mutations 11,12 . Mutant PKP2 iPSC-CMs demonstrate abnormal plakoglobin nuclear translocation and decreased β-catenin activity 13 in cardiogenic conditions; yet these abnormal features are insufficient to reproduce the pathological phenotypes of ARVD/C in standard cardiogenic conditions. Here we show that induction of adult-like metabolic energetics from an embryonic/glycolytic state and abnormal peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma (PPARγ) activation underlie the pathogenesis of ARVD/C. By coactivating normal PPAR-alpha (PPARα)-dependent metabolism and abnormal PPARγ pathway in beating embryoid bodies (EBs) with defined media, we established an efficient ARVD/C in-vitro model within two months. This model manifests exaggerated lipogenesis and apoptosis in mutant PKP2 iPSC-CMs. iPSC-CMs with a homozygous PKP2 mutation also displayed calcium-handling deficits. Our study is the first to demonstrate that induction of adult-like metabolism plays a critical role in establishing an adult-onset disease model using patient-specific iPSCs. Using this model, we revealed crucial pathogenic insights that metabolic derangement in adult-like metabolic milieu underlies ARVD/C pathologies, enabling us to propose novel disease-modifying therapeutic strategies.