Unveiling the molecular crosstalk in a human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiac model

In vitro cell-based models that better mimic the human heart tissue are of utmost importance for drug development and cardiotoxicity testing but also as tools to understand mechanisms related with heart disease at cellular and molecular level. Besides, the implementation of analytical tools that allow the depiction and comprehensive understanding of the molecular mechanisms of the crosstalk between the different cell types is also relevant. In this work, we implemented a human cardiac tissue-like in vitro model, derived from human-induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC), and evaluated the relevance of the cell-cell communication between the two of the most representative cell populations of the human heart: cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CM) and endothelial cells (hiPSC-EC). We observed that heterotypic cell communication promotes: (a) structural maturation of hiPSC-CM and (b) deposition of several extracellular matrix components (such as collagens and fibronectin). Overall, the toolbox of analytical techniques used in our study not only enabled us to validate previous reports from the literature on the importance of the presence of hiPSC-EC on hiPSC-CM maturation, but also bring new insights on the molecular mechanisms involved in the communication between these two cell types when cocultured in vitro.