TY - JOUR
A2 - Arnhold, Stefan
AU - Sun, XiaoLin
AU - Li, HongXiao
AU - Zhu, Ye
AU - Xu, Pei
AU - Zuo, QiSheng
AU - Li, BiChun
AU - Gu, Xiang
PY - 2020
DA - 2020/09/08
TI - 5-Azacytidine-Induced Cardiomyocyte Differentiation of Very Small Embryonic-Like Stem Cells
SP - 5162350
VL - 2020
AB - The use of stem cells in generating cell-based pacemaker therapies for bradyarrhythmia is currently being considered. Due to the propensity of stem cells to form tumors, as well as ethical issues surrounding their use, the seed cells used in cardiac biological pacemakers have limitations. Very small embryonic-like stem cells (VSELs) are a unique and rare adult stem cell population, which have the same structural, genetic, biochemical, and functional characteristics as embryonic stem cells without the ethical controversy. In this study, we investigated the ability of rat bone marrow- (BM-) derived VSELs to differentiate in vitro into cardiomyocytes by 5-Azacytidine (5-AzaC) treatment. The morphology of VSELs treated with 10 μM 5-AzaC increased in volume and gradually changed to cardiomyocyte-like morphology without massive cell death. Additionally, mRNA expression of the cardiomyocyte markers cardiac troponin-T (cTnT) and α-sarcomeric actin (α-actin) was significantly upregulated after 5-AzaC treatment. Conversely, stem cell markers such as Nanog, Oct-4, and Sox2 were continuously downregulated posttreatment. On day 14 post-5-AzaC treatment, the positive expression rates of cTnT and α-actin were 18.41±1.51% and 19.43±0.51%, respectively. Taken together, our results showed that rat BM-VSELs have the ability to differentiate into cardiomyocytes in vitro. These findings suggest that VSELs would be useful as seed cells in exploring the mechanism of biological pacemaker activity.
SN - 1687-966X
UR - https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/5162350
DO - 10.1155/2020/5162350
JF - Stem Cells International
PB - Hindawi
KW -
ER -