Heart stem cells articles from across Nature Portfolio

Cardiac fibroblasts play an essential role in heart development. Here Fernandes et al. describe a human pluripotent stem cell-derived epicardial organoid system to investigate the role of fibroblasts in cardiovascular development and disease.

A population of human cardiac fibroblasts displays features of both mesenchymal and lymphoid origin cells and these cells reside in pulmonary arterial hypertension fibrotic tissue of patients and a rat model.

Using hiPSC, the authors report impaired ventricular specification, altered cardiac gene expression and ectopic neuronal gene expression in tetralogy of Fallot with DiGeorge syndrome cardiomyocytes (TOF-DG-hiPSC-CMs) and increased arrhythmogenicity in cardiac anisotropic sheet derived from TOF-DG-hiPSC-CMs.

Epigenetic barriers need to be surmounted in order to increase the efficiency of cardiac reprogramming. A new study now reports that the histone reader PHF7 enhances cardiac reprogramming via recruiting the chromatin remodelling SWI/SNF complex and key transcription factors to the cardiac super enhancers.

Structural and functional changes following infarction in a human heart can be modelled with human cardiac organoids set in a hypoxic gradient and stimulated with the neurotransmitter noradrenaline.

Early studies showing that KIT⁺ cardiac progenitor cells (CPCs) could differentiate into cardiomyocytes generated excitement regarding their potential therapeutic application. Subsequent studies called their functional relevance into question, and while claims for a contribution of KIT⁺ CPCs to myocardial regeneration continue, two new studies confirm the doubts about their relevance to cardiomyogenesis and provide unexpected new insights.

Grafting platelet-derived nanovesicles onto the surface of cardiosphere-derived cardiac stem cells enables the cells to better engraft in infarcted tissue following systemic injection in rats and pigs.