In vivo generation of post-infarct human cardiac muscle by laminin-promoted cardiovascular progenitors [LN-521 or LN-521+LN-221]. Homo sapiens

Regeneration of injured human heart muscle is limited and an unmet clinical need. There are no methods for the reproducible generation of clinical quality stem-cell-derived cardiovascular progenitors (CVPs). We identified laminin-221 (LN-221) as the most likely expressed cardiac laminin. We produced it as human recombinant protein, and showed that LN-221 promotes differentiation of pluripotent hESCs towards cardiomyocyte lineage and downregulates pluripotency and teratoma associated genes. We developed a chemically defined, xeno-free laminin-based differentiation protocol to generate CVPs. We show high reproducibility of the differentiation protocol using time-course bulk RNA sequencing developed from different hESC lines. Single-cell RNA sequencing of CVPs derived from hESC lines supported reproducibility and identified three main progenitor subpopulations. These CVPs were transplanted into myocardial infarction mice, where heart function was measured by echocardiogram and human heart muscle bundle formation was identified histologically. This method may provide clinical quality cells for use in regenerative cardiology. Overall design: Human embryonic stem cells were cultured in wells coated with LN-521 or LN-521+LN-221 using nutristem medium. RNA is extracted when cells reached confluence.