Advancements in Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Technology for Cardiac Regenerative Medicine

Non-viral reprogramming and induced pluripotent stem cells for cardiovascular therapy

Despite significant effort devoted to developing new treatments and procedures, cardiac disease is still one of the leading causes of death in the world. The loss of myocytes due to ischemic injury remains a major therapeutic challenge. However, cell-based therapy to repair the injured heart has shown significant promise in basic and translation research and in clinical trials. Embryonic stem cells have been successfully used to improve cardiac outcomes. Unfortunately, treatment with these cells is complicated by ethical and legal issues. Recent progress in developing induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) using non-viral vectors has made it possible to derive cardiomyocytes for therapy. This review will focus on these non-integration-based approaches for reprogramming and their therapeutic advantages for cardiovascular medicine.

Induced pluripotent stem cells for cardiovascular disease: from product-focused disease modeling to process-focused disease discovery

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology offers an unprecedented opportunity to study patient-specific disease. This biotechnology platform enables recapitulation of individualized disease signatures in a dish through differentiation of patient-derived iPS cells. Beyond disease modeling, the in vitro process of differentiation toward genuine patient tissue offers a blueprint to inform disease etiology and molecular pathogenesis. Here, we highlight recent advances in patient-specific cardiac disease modeling and outline the future promise of iPS cell-based disease discovery applications.

Perspectives of induced pluripotent stem cells for cardiovascular system regeneration

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) hold great promise for basic research and regenerative medicine. They offer the same advantages as embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and moreover new perspectives for personalized medicine. iPSCs can be generated from adult somatic tissues by over-expression of a few defined transcription factors, including Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-myc. For regenerative medicine in particular, the technology provides great hope for patients with incurable diseases or potentially fatal disorders such as heart failure. The endogenous regenerative potentials of adult hearts are extremely limited and insufficient to compensate for myocardial loss occurring after myocardial infarction. Recent discoveries have demonstrated that iPSCs have the potential to significantly advance future cardiovascular regenerative therapies. Moreover, iPSCs can be generated from somatic cells of patients with genetic basis for their disease. This human iPSC derivates offer tremendous potential for new disease models. This paper reviews current applications of iPSCs in cardiovascular regenerative medicine and discusses progress in modeling cardiovascular diseases using iPSCs-derived cardiac cells.