Cardiospheres

This article is applicable to the cardiomyocyte stem cell SNBAL we discussed. Researchers have found that patient-derived “cardiospheres” are not only useful for revealing what drugs may cause arrhythmia and other cardiovascular problems, but also that they can be used to find cures to genetic heart diseases, one such being Timothy syndrome. Skin cells from a patient with Timothy syndrome were “undifferentiated” to form stem cells through induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell reprogramming, and were chemically induced to grow into masses containing ventricular, nodal, and atrial cells. These cells, unlike the cardiospheres grown from a healthy individual, did not beat normally; they were much slower and had a longer contraction, following the signs of Timothy syndrome. Because of the difficulty of recreating these heart defects in animals to test possible treatments, these cardiospheres will play an important role in determining in detail the effectiveness of different compounds on alleviating the abnormalities caused by Timothy syndrome. This method of using iPS-derived cells is also being explored to develop neural tissue from patients with autism to gain a greater knowledge of how the disease affects specific workings of the neural cells. These iPS-derived stem cells will give researchers the ability to test drug toxicity, study the details of specific diseases, and possibly find cures.

This article was intriguing because it contained a direct application from our second SNBAL, and because this concept of cardiospheres can be used to effectively study different aspects of genetic heart disorders and how exactly they defect the cardiomyocytes. The effectiveness of treatments can also be analyzed more in-depth in the workings of a human heart rather than relying solely on animal testing and clinical trials.

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/32308/page2/