Project description:The main aim of this study was to investigate a direct alteration of the electrical properties of coupled cardiomyocytes by tissue-memory T cells from epicardial adipose tissue.
Project description:Evaluate the change in transcription factors that have a role in human mesenchymal stem cell (hMSC) commitment to a cardiomyocyte lineage when co-cultured for 4 days with rat neonatal cardiomyocytes and before acquiring a recognizable cardiac phenotype. A myocardial microenvironment was generated by dissociating neonatal rat hearts and establishing cardiomyocyte primary cultures. HumanMSCs constitutively labeled with dsRed localized to the cell's mitochondria were either grown separately (control) or added to the cardiomyocyte primary cultures and grown for 4 days. dsRed fluorescent hMSCs were harvested from co-cultures at 4 days using a FACscan flow cytometer. The RNA for the microarray analysis was prepared from three biologically separate samples of hMSCs co-cultured for 4 days and from hMSCs grown separately for 4 days (control).
Project description:Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained cardiac arrhythmia treatable with antiarrhythmic drugs, but patient responses are highly variable. Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived atrial cardiomyocytes (iPSC-aCMs) are useful for discovering precision therapeutics, but current platforms yield an immature cellular phenotype and are not easily scalable for high-throughput screening. Here, we report that primary adult atrial, but not ventricular, fibroblasts induced greater functional iPSC-aCM maturation, partly through connexin-40 and ephrin-B1 signaling. We developed a protein patterning process within industry-standard multiwell plates to engineer patterned co-culture (PC) of iPSC-aCMs and atrial fibroblasts that significantly enhanced iPSC-aCM structural, electrical, contractile, and metabolic maturation for 6+ weeks versus conventional mono-/co-cultures. PC displayed greater sensitivity for detecting drug efficacy than monocultures, and enabled the modeling and pharmacological or gene editing treatment of an AF-like electrophysiological phenotype due to a sodium channel mutation. In conclusion, PC is useful to elucidate heterotypic cell signaling in the atria, drug screening, and to model AF.
Project description:Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained cardiac arrhythmia treatable with antiarrhythmic drugs, but patient responses are highly variable. Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived atrial cardiomyocytes (iPSC-aCMs) are useful for discovering precision therapeutics, but current platforms yield an immature cellular phenotype and are not easily scalable for high-throughput screening. Here, we report that primary adult atrial, but not ventricular, fibroblasts induced greater functional iPSC-aCM maturation, partly through connexin-40 and ephrin-B1 signaling. We developed a protein patterning process within industry-standard multiwell plates to engineer patterned co-culture (PC) of iPSC-aCMs and atrial fibroblasts that significantly enhanced iPSC-aCM structural, electrical, contractile, and metabolic maturation for 6+ weeks versus conventional mono-/co-cultures. PC displayed greater sensitivity for detecting drug efficacy than monocultures, and enabled the modeling and pharmacological or gene editing treatment of an AF-like electrophysiological phenotype due to a sodium channel mutation. In conclusion, PC is useful to elucidate heterotypic cell signaling in the atria, drug screening, and to model AF.
Project description:Co-cultures of lung epithelium and mesenchyme are useful tools to study epithelial-mesenchymal crosstalk in lung development and disease. However, many previous attempts to generate such co-cultures have yielded poor juxtaposition between the epithelial and the mesenchymal lineage. In addition, induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived co-cultures often contain generic mesenchyme that is not necessarily lung-specific. We sought to establish co-cultures of purified mouse iPSC-derived lung-specific mesenchyme and iPSC-derived lung epithelial progenitors. We used a mouse iPSC line carrying a lung mesenchyme-specific reporter/tracer (Tbx4-LERGFP) to generate lung mesenchymal progenitors by directed differentiation via a lateral plate mesodermal progenitor state (induced lung mesenchyme, iLM). In parallel we differentiated a mouse embryonic stem (ES) cell line carrying a Nkx2-1mCherry reporter into lung epithelial progenitor cells using our established directed differentiation protocol. We then combined the purified lung epithelial and mesenchymal progenitor cells and co-cultured them in distal or proximal differentiation media for 1 week on Matrigel. We find that cells self-organize into complex 3-dimensional organoids with closely juxtaposed epithelial and mesenchymal cells. Furthermore, co-culture affects the molecular phenotype of both lineages. Our iPSC-derived co-culture model can provide an inexhaustible source of cells for studying lung development, modeling diseases, and developing therapeutics.
Project description:Alterations in autonomic function are known to occur in cardiac conditions including sudden cardiac death. Cardiac stimulation via sympathetic neurons can potentially trigger arrhythmias. Dissecting direct neural-cardiac interactions at the cellular level is technically challenging and understudied due to the lack of experimental model systems and methodologies. Here we demonstrate the utility of optical interrogation of sympathetic neurons and their effects on macroscopic cardiomyocyte network dynamics to address research targets such as the effects of adrenergic stimulation via the release of neurotransmitters, the effect of neuronal numbers on cardiac wave behaviour and the applicability of optogenetics in mechanistic in vitro studies. We present novel methodologies to study neuron-cardiomyocyte interactions involving optogenetic selective probing and all-optical electrophysiology to measure electrical activity in an automated fashion, illustrating the power and high-throughput capability of such interrogations. We present new findings on how neurons impact cardiac macroscopic wave properties, the links between neuron density and cardiac firing rates as well as the challenges and benefits of macroscopic co-cultures as experimental model systems.
Project description:To explore the mechanistic basis of ApoE Ɛ4 vs ApoE Ɛ3 protein expression on endocytic pathways responsible for tau uptake in neurons and astrocytes and the maturation of neuronal networks, we have developed genotype matched co-cultures of iPSC derived astrocytes and neurons derived from isogenic triads of iPSC lines generated by the ADAPTED consortium (Schmid et al., 2019, 2020) . We show that isogenic iPSC derived APOE-E4 expressing astrocytes take up less extracellular tau than APOE-E3 or APOE null astrocytes, while isogenic neurons in monoculture take up equivalent amounts of tau primarily through macropinocytosis. Co-culture of neurons with genotype matched astrocytes increases the general uptake capacity of neurons by increasing the dependence of neuronal endocytosis on dynamin mediated pathways. Co-culture also enhances the emergence of spontaneous neuronal activity; however, the emergence of synchronous network activity is impaired by the expression of APOE-E4 genotype. We performed RNA-Seq on the astrocytes, neurons and co-cultures to understand the molecular pathway changes associated with different ApoE genotypes.