2012|13 Annual Report Fraunhofer IGB

1 iPSC-derived progenitor cells (green) that were injected into the heart of a living mouse become functional heart muscle (red). Cell nuclei are blue. 2 Bioinformatic analysis at Fraunhofer IGB. 3 Cardiovascular progenitor cells (blue) develop into cardiac muscle cells (red). 67 Prof. Dr. Katja Schenke-Layland Phone +49 711 970-4082 katja.schenke-layland@igb.fraunhofer.de Shannon Lee Layland B.A. Phone +49 711 970-4283 shannon.layland@igb.fraunhofer.de iPSC-derived progenitor cells integrate into the living mouse heart To answer the questions of how the iPSC-derived progenitor cells behave in vivo and whether they can really integrate into the cardiac tissue, we injected the cells into the heart of a liv- ing mouse. We could demonstrate that the progenitor cells developed into beating cardiomyocytes and fully integrated into the myocardial tissue of the mouse. Outlook To stimulate the regeneration of heart muscle cells, adult stem cells have been injected directly into the heart. Although a majority of studies found a slight improvement in heart func- tion, in most cases neither the long-term integration nor dif- ferentiation of the cells into functional heart muscle have been demonstrated. The result of our work provides the ﬁrst opportunity to generate functional and mature heart muscle cells, which integrate into the heart muscle. We are currently focusing on the generation of human iPSC-derived progenitor cells for clinical trials and treatment of diseased heart muscle. References [1] Nsair, A. et al. (2012) PLoS One 7(10): e45603 [2] Takahashi, K.; Yamanaka, S. (2006) Cell 126(4): 663–676 Project partners University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA, USA | University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA | University Women’s Hospital at the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen Funding We would like to thank the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft for the sup- port of the Attract Group and the California Institute for Re- generative Medicine (CIRM) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for funding the project “Char- acterization and Bioengineering of the cardiac stem cell niche”, promotional reference 0316059. 2 3 Contacts

2012|13 Annual Report Fraunhofer IGB

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