Cardiomyocyte

Cardiomyocytes are the heart muscle cells that cause other heart cells to contract and release, thus establishing heartbeat. But when heart tissue is grown from induced pluripotent stem cells, the cardiomyocytes have to be taught to beat. To that end, bioengineers at Columbia University followed this strategy: ““We applied electrical stimulation to mature these cells, regulate their contractile function, and improve their ability to connect with each other. In fact, we trained the cell to adopt the beating pattern of the heart, improved the organization of important cardiac proteins, and helped the cells to become more adult-like. This preconditioning is an important step to generating robust cells that are useful for a wide range of applications including the study of cardiomyocyte biology, drug testing, and stem cell therapy. And we think that our method could lead to the reduction of arrhythmia during cell-based heart regeneration.”     MORE

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