多能干细胞诱导分化及体细胞转分化为心肌细胞的研究进展

心血管疾病是威胁人类健康的重大疾病,而心肌细胞数量逐渐减少,甚至衰竭是其核心病变。心肌细胞补偿性替代治疗是未来用于治疗这类疾病的重要手段,因此,心肌细胞的来源和有效治疗将成为关键。目前,心肌细胞构建的主要方法有多能干细胞诱导分化成心肌祖细胞或心肌细胞、心源性心肌祖细胞,以及体细胞重编程等。其中,多能干细胞向心肌细胞分化是最常用的方法;而体细胞转分化技术相较于传统的诱导多潜能干细胞衍生心肌细胞缩短了时间窗,为潜在的心血管疾病治疗提供了另一种思路。随着获取心肌细胞效率及其质量的提升,未来心血管疾病的治疗将有望获得重大突破。

Progress in pluripotent stem cell differentiation and somatic cell transdifferentiation into cardiomyocytes

Cardiovascular diseases are one of the leading causes of human death in the whole world. The progressive decrease and even exhaustion of myocardial cells are the root causes of cardiac problems. Cardiac muscle engineering will be an important tool for curing the cardiovascular disorders in future. Therefore, production of perfectly matched cardiomyocytes is important for cardiovascular replacement therapy. But the challenge is how to generate the cardiomyocytes. There are some methods to construct myocardial cells, including differentiating induced pluripotent stem cells into cardiac myocytes, myocardial cells derived directly from animal or human heart, somatic cell reprogramming, and so on. Differentiating pluripotent stem cells is the most popular method; also somatic cell reprogramming and transdifferentiation can shorten the time for generating cardiomyocytes compared with the traditional method with induced pluripotent stem cells. Recently published observations confirm the hope that differentiating pluripotent stem and somatic cell reprogramming will be potential methods for cardiovascular disease treatment. With the improved efficiency in obtaining cardiomyocytes, it is possible to have a big achievement in cell therapy for cardiovascular diseases.