Predictive Biomarker Exploration of Cardiac Differentiation Propensity of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells.

Selection of hiPSC lines with high cardiac differentiation potential is a major issue for their application to regenerative therapy and drug screening. Here we aimed to find biomarkers to predict cardiac differentiation propensity of hiPSC lines by comparing gene expression profiles of 6 undifferentiated hiPSC lines having different cardiac differentiation capability. We used three platforms of gene expression analysis, the cap analysis gene expression (CAGE) method, mRNA array and microRNA array, to efficiently screen biomarkers related to cardiac differentiation in hiPSCs.