Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a considerable burden in the healthcare system, and none of the available treatments target the cause of the disease. One potential way to limit the progression of the pathology is to target the loss of functioning cardiomyocytes through regenerative medicine. However, to date, transplantation of human cells into infarcted hearts has not replaced lost cardiomyocytes as intended. In previous work, implanting a patch composed of cardiomyocytes derived from human pluripotent stem cells and human neonatal fibroblasts into a rat model of CHF showed promising results by enhancing left ventricular function. A study now shows that implanting this allogeneic patch in Yucatan mini pigs after myocardial infarction had physiological benefits, restoring cardiac function and potentially treating ischemic CHF. The team also used digital spatial profiling, a method that provides data from immunostaining, imaging, transcriptomics, and sequencing of specific areas of tissue, to provide information about tissue histology, protein expression and the spatial location of RNA transcripts. These data revealed that, in mice, the patch induced an immune response, resulting in the infiltration of dendritic cells and macrophages, which improved regeneration. All together, these results show the potential of xenograft transplants without immunosuppression to treat CHF.
Original reference: Lancaster, J.J. et al. Commun. Biol. 6, 1203 (2023)
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