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Research Highlight

THE WAY TO YOUR HEART
Drs. Alexander Mikryukov and Gordon
Keller discovered how to produce endocardial
cells—a type of cell that lines the interior of the
heart—from stem cells in the laboratory.

During the earliest stages of human development,
endocardial cells stimulate the growth of the first
heart muscle tissue and give rise to cells that form
blood vessels and the valves of the heart.

To identify how these heart cells arise in the
body, the team recreated conditions for early
heart development in a laboratory setting. Using
human pluripotent stem cells, they showed that
the protein known as BMP10 plays a key role in
the development of the laboratory grown cells.
Through advanced gene expression studies, the
team found that the endocardial cells that were
generated from stem cells share remarkable
similarities with the endocardial cells in the heart.

The ability to produce endocardial cells in the
laboratory opens new avenues for modelling heart
development and disease. It also provides, for the
first time, the cell types required for engineering
a biological heart valve that could be used to treat
heart valve diseases. Full Story / Scientific Article

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