Induced pluripotent stems (iPS) cell technology in cardiac regeneration

Cardiovascular disease is one of the causes of death and also medical cost increasing in the world. Researchers are looking for high-confidence treatments based on Stem cell therapy for myocardial restoration. However, the direct injection of adult stem cells into ischemic hearts has failed to improve cardiac function sufficiently. It is reported that more than 70 % of cells will die during the first 48 h after direct injection. The low survival percentage of the grafted cells diminishes the potential of this approach as an effective therapy. To obtain better therapeutic outcome, new strategies emphasize the use of high potential induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells derived cardiomyocytes (CM). iPS cells have demonstrated that biological development is reversible and that mature adult somatic cells can be induced to become pluripotent. Of course, the hardships of using iPS cells are not few, like teratoma formation, possible risk of tumourigenicity and low efficacy of cell reprogramming. Moreover, about uses of these cells to improve heart disease, graft cell death and arhythmogenesis need to be overcome with clinical practices by scientifics. We’d rather talk about novel progression in iPS cell technology strategies in order to improve cell survival and functional integration after cell grafting. For example, the generation of cell sheets or patches as micro-tissues without a scaffold support and transplanting thick multi-layered induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiac tissue sheets (CTSs) that had gelatin hydrogel microspheres (GHMs) between the layers avoiding central necrosis during in vitro culture to overcome the stacking limitation of hypoxia. Methods such as this may be able to overcome current obstacles in heart regenerative medicine

Keywords:

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology , Cardiac regeneration , Tissue engineering , iPS cells , Cardiac tissue sheets