Key result
Transplanted human cardiac organoids survive, expand to ~8 mm, and vascularize in mice over 75 days.
Why the study?
There is a need for complex and functional human cardiac organoid models to replicate cardiac diseases and enable cardiovascular research and therapeutic exploration.
Self-assembling vascularized human cardiac organoids can successfully model cardiac diseases in vitro and integrate with host vasculature in vivo, offering a promising platform for cardiovascular research.
Advances preclinical vascularized cardiac organoid models; leaves open human therapeutic translation.
In this study, we generated self-assembly cardiac organoids (COs) from human pluripotent stem cells by dual-phase modulation of Wnt/β-catenin pathway, utilizing CHIR99021 and IWR-1-endo. The resulting COs exhibited a diverse array of cardiac-specific cell lineages, cardiac cavity-like structures and demonstrated the capacity of spontaneous beating and vascularization in vitro . We further employed these complex and functional COs to replicate conditions akin to human myocardial infarction and SARS-CoV-2 induced fibrosis. These models accurately captured the pathological characteristics of these diseases, in both in vitro and in vivo settings. In addition, we transplanted the COs into NOD SCID mice and observed that they survived and exhibited ongoing expansion in vivo. Impressively, over a span of 75-day transplantation, these COs not only established blood vessel-like structures but also integrated with the host mice’s vascular system. It is noteworthy that these COs developed to a size of approximately 8 mm in diameter, slightly surpassing the dimensions of the mouse heart. This innovative research highlighted the potential of our COs as a promising avenue for cardiovascular research and therapeutic exploration.
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Zhong et al. (2023) studied Myocardial infarction and SARS-CoV-2 induced fibrosis models. Self-assembly cardiac organoids (COs) was evaluated on Survival, expansion, and vascular integration of COs in vivo. Self-assembled human cardiac organoids transplanted into NOD SCID mice survived, expanded to approximately 8 mm, and integrated with the host vascular system over 75 days.
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