Pluripotent-Stem-Cell-Derived Epicardial Cells: A Step toward Artificial Cardiac Tissue

摘要

Epicardial cells are crucial for heart development, function, and regeneration, but methods to study them have been lacking. Using WNT and BMP signaling pathways, Witty et al. (2014) have now developed an elaborate method to generate fully functional epicardial cells from human pluripotent stem cells, allowing their in vitro investigation. Generating artificial cardiac tissue for functional studies in vitro and therapeutic applications in vivo is an ambitious goal, in particular in view of the growing number of heart failure patients. Therefore, pluripotent stem cells offer great opportunities as a reliable and unlimited source for cardiac cells and tissues (Brenner and Franz, 2011). Despite significant recent progress made in identifying factors for the induction of endocardial and myocardial differentiation, the epicardium has hardly been addressed until now.