Micropatterned Coculture of Stem Cell-derived Ventricular Cardiomyocytes and Adult Fibroblasts

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading causes of death in the world. Developing human and patient-specific in vitro models is fundamental for drug screening, disease modeling, and ultimately regenerative medicine. This thesis focuses on differentiating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) into ventricular cardiomyocytes (iPSC-vCMs). However, current protocols yield cells that are not as mature as their adult cell counterparts. Therefore, this project leverages key biochemical cues, co-culture with non-parenchymal cells of the heart, and protein micropatterning to further mature iPSC-vCMs. Lastly, to enable more on-demand use of these cells for drug screening applications, this thesis optimizes a protocol to cryopreserve iPSC-vCMs and culture them using some of the techniques above. Ultimately, the maturation and cryopreservation approaches developed in this thesis can further enable the use of functionally matured iPSC-vCMs for the above applications.