Methods for Cardiomyocyte Isolation from Heterogeneous Cell Populations for Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering Applications

摘要

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world and is likely to remain as such in the foreseeable future. There is a great deal of optimism for cardiac regenerative therapies because recent advances in stem cell technology have made it possible to derive millions of cardiomyocytes from human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells. These stem cell-derived cardiac cells also have an enormous potential in drug discovery, toxicology studies and fundamental cardiac physiology. Cardiomyocytes do not have well-established, specific surface markers to enable their separation from heterogeneous cultures using transient antibody labelling and traditional methods such as fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) or magnetic activated cell sorting (MACS). Therefore, a major obstacle in realizing their potential is the development of separation methods that are compatible with clinical applications and can isolate cardiomyocytes and specific cardiac cell subpopulations after in vitro culture in sufficient numbers, purity and quality. This review provides an overview of the present state of the art in labelled and label-free cardiomyocyte isolation, the challenges to the field and a perspective on the future of cardiac cell separation.