• HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
Friday, January 22, 2021
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Stem Cells

Stem cell advance yields mature heart muscle cells

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
March 4, 2014
in Stem Cells
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has induced human embryonic stem cells (hESC) to differentiate toward pure-population, mature heart muscle cells, or cardiomyocytes.A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has induced human embryonic stem cells (hESC) to differentiate toward pure-population, mature heart muscle cells, or cardiomyocytes.

Stem cell advance yields mature heart muscle cells

A substrate patterned with a precisely sized series of channels played a critical role in the advance.

Published online in the journal Biomaterials, the research could open the door to advances in areas that include tissue engineering and drug discovery and testing.

Researchers currently can differentiate hESC into immature heart muscle cells. Those cells, however, don’t develop the robust internal structures — repeating sections of muscle cells called sarcomeres — that enable cardiomyocytes to produce the contracting force that allows the heart to pump blood. Other cell components that allow heart muscle cells to communicate and work together also are less developed in immature cardiomyocytes.

One barrier to efforts to produce more mature cells is the culture surface itself; hESC are notoriously finicky. “It’s really hard to culture stem cells effectively and to provide them with an environment that’s going to help them to thrive and differentiate in the way you want,” says lead author Wendy Crone, a professor of engineering physics, biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering at UW-Madison.

Recently, three-dimensional and micropatterned substrates have emerged as more accurately mimicking the cells’ physiological environment. However, the majority of previous research studies using patterning were conducted using cells from rats, says Max Salick, a Ph.D. student in materials science at UW-Madison and first author on the paper.

“One of the unique aspects of our research is that it observes human cardiomyocytes’ response to micropatterning geometries,” he says.

Working in laboratories in the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, the UW-Madison researchers focused on finding the pattern, including the right size scale, that suits the human stem cells.

“Our hypothesis was that if we could control the cell shape and how they bind to their surroundings using this micropatterning, we could coax them into forming more aligned, structurally sound fibrous structures that are more relevant in the heart,” says Salick.

The researchers’ micropatterned substrate consists of a series of lanes, or channels. When they put the cells into the lanes, they saw a clear differences in how the cells responded to various lane sizes-and identifying the optimal size scale was key.

“If the lane was too wide, the cells weren’t really able to ‘feel’ their lane, so they didn’t align as well,” says Salick. “But with lanes less than 100 microns wide, we really started to see the alignment, a stronger sarcomere structure and a more mature phenotype.”

The substrate method is more effective and easy to control than others the researchers have explored in the past. And now that they know lane width is critical, the researchers can make the lanes infinitely long, which enables individual cells to link and communicate with neighboring cells.

“This not only gets them to look like sarcomeres, and their internal structure starts to look like what it’s supposed to and behave like what it’s supposed to, but the cells also communicate with their neighbors,” says Crone. “It’s the closest we’ve gotten to pure-population adult cardiomyocytes.”

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by The University of Wisconsin.
Photo: Brant Ward / The Chronicle

Share12Tweet7Share2ShareShareShare1

Related Posts

blank

Human stem cells treat spinal cord injury side effects in mice

October 4, 2016
blank

Research into fly development provides insights into blood vessel formation

September 30, 2016

Fertility genes required for sperm stem cells

September 28, 2016

Regulatory RNA essential to DNA damage response

September 27, 2016
Next Post
blank

Brain development provides insights into adolescent depression

blank

Manufacturing a solution to planet-clogging plastics

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

POPULAR NEWS

  • IMAGE

    The map of nuclear deformation takes the form of a mountain landscape

    54 shares
    Share 22 Tweet 14
  • People living with HIV face premature heart disease and barriers to care

    65 shares
    Share 26 Tweet 16
  • New drug form may help treat osteoporosis, calcium-related disorders

    40 shares
    Share 16 Tweet 10
  • New findings help explain how COVID-19 overpowers the immune system

    35 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Tags

GeneticsBiologyPublic HealthcancerInfectious/Emerging DiseasesChemistry/Physics/Materials SciencesMedicine/HealthEcology/EnvironmentTechnology/Engineering/Computer ScienceClimate ChangeMaterialsCell Biology

Recent Posts

  • A professor from RUDN University developed new liquid crystals
  • New technique builds super-hard metals from nanoparticles
  • No more needles for diagnostic tests?
  • A method for calculating optimal parameters of liquid chrystal displays developed at RUDN University
  • Contact Us

© 2019 Bioengineer.org - Biotechnology news by Science Magazine - Scienmag.

No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

© 2019 Bioengineer.org - Biotechnology news by Science Magazine - Scienmag.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In