Stepwise Generation of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Cardiac Pericytes to Model Coronary Microvascular Dysfunction

Cardiac pericytes (PC), a major mural cell type maintaining homeostasis, integrity, and perfusion of the coronary microvasculature. Here, we report a stepwise, developmental trajectory-matched approach to generate first-of-its-kind cardiac PCs from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which were shown to transcriptionally and functionally resemble their primary counterparts. Overall design: We performed gene expression profiling analysis using data obtained from RNA-seq of iPSC differentiated cardiac pericytes (PCs), PCs with sunitinib treatment, and PCs with sunitinib and thalidomide treatment.