Cardiomyocytes acting like adults

A collaboration between Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute and The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine cardiology teams has developed a model for arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia/cardiomyopathy that for the first time is able to replicate the phenotype of the disease.¹ The key innovation was getting the induced pluripotent stem cell-based model to behave more like adult heart cells than fetal heart cells.

The team expects that the model could be used to identify disease-modifying therapeutics and thinks researchers working with induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell-based models of other disease should consider maturing the final cell type when needed...