Using Cardiovascular Cells from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells for COVID-19 Research: Why the Heart Fails

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) led to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak that became a pandemic in 2020, causing more than 30 million infections and 1 million deaths to date. As the scientific community has looked for vaccines and drugs to treat or eliminate the virus, unexpected features of the disease have emerged. Apart from respiratory complications, cardiovascular disease has emerged as a major indicator of poor prognosis in COVID-19. It has therefore become of utmost importance to understand how SARS-CoV-2 damages the heart. Human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) cardiovascular derivatives were rapidly recognized as an invaluable tool to address this, not least because one of the major receptors for the virus is not recognized by SARS-CoV-2 in mice. Here, we outline how hPSC-derived cardiovascular cells have been utilized to study COVID-19, and their potential for further understanding the cardiac pathology and in therapeutic development.