Direct reprogramming of mouse fibroblasts into cardiomyocytes with chemical cocktails. Mus musculus

The direct conversion, or trans-differentiation, of non-cardiac cells into cardiomyocytes by forced expression of transcription factors and microRNAs provide promising ways of cardiac regeneration. However, genetic manipulations are still not desirable in real clinical applications. we report the generation of automatically beating cardiomyocyte-like cells from mouse fibroblasts with only chemical cocktails. These chemical-induced cardiomyocyte-like cells (CiCMs) express cardiomyocyte-specific markers, exhibit sarcomeric organization, and possess typical cardiac calcium flux and electrophysiological features. Microarray-bassed gene expression patterns of Mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs), CiCMs, and cardiomyocytes(CMs) indicated a clear transition from dividing MEFs to differentiated cardiomyocyte-like state in CiCM samples. Overall design: Mouse embryonic fibroblasts were treated with a small-molecule combination CRFVPT (10 μM CHIR99021 (C); 10 μM RepSox (R); 50 μM Forskolin (F); 0.5 mM VPA (V); 5 μM Parnate, (P); 1 μM TTNPB (T)) to induce transdifferentiation to chemical-induced cardiomyocyte-like cells. CiCMs beating clusters were picked at day 24 for analysis. MEFs were isolated from mouse embryos, and CMs were isolated from mouse hearts. Total RNA of MEFs, CiCMs and CMs were extracted and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays.