Long-term self-renewing human epicardial cells generated from pluripotent stem cells under defined xeno-free conditions.

ABSTRACT: The epicardium contributes both multi-lineage descendants and paracrine factors to the heart during cardiogenesis and cardiac repair, underscoring its potential for cardiac regenerative medicine. Yet little is known about the cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate human epicardial development and regeneration. Here, we show that the temporal modulation of canonical Wnt signaling is sufficient for epicardial induction from 6 different human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) lines, including a WT1-2A-eGFP knock-in reporter line, under chemically-defined, xeno-free conditions. We also show that treatment with transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β)-signalling inhibitors permitted long-term expansion of the hPSC-derived epicardial cells, resulting in a more than 25 population doublings of

SUBMITTER: Bao X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5408455 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature