Don’t skip a beat : studying cardiac rhythm in human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease is responsible for 17 million deaths globally each year. Research aimed at understanding the form and function of this vital organ will be key to improving patient

care. Although animal models such as rat, rabbit and dog have proven to be valuable to study heart physiology, there are a number of important species-specific differences, for e.g. heart

rate, when compared with the human heart. In the recent years, research on cardiomyocytes(CMs) derived from human pluripotent stem cells has demonstrated that they resemble native human CMs and hence, make excellent models to study heart development and disease in

vitro.In this dissertation,we present studies that describe the use of hPSC-CMs for pharamacological testing and for modeling inherited arrhythmogenic disorders.Combined with other novel technologies in the fields of genetic medicine, tissue engineering,and genome editing, hPSC-CM models will be valuable for 1) understanding lineage decisions determining CM specification, 2) unraveling molecular basis of disease, 3) translational applications such as target/drug discovery, diagnostic medicine and developing effective treatment strategies.