Ex Vivo Differentiation Of Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells Into Cardiomyocyte-like Cells

ObjectiveCardiomyocytes loss, myocardial infarction emerging and ventricular remodeling are not only the leading causes of pump dysfunction, but also primary pathomechanism of congestive heart failure. Cellular transplantation is being explored as a newly developed strategy for treating patients with end-stage heart disease, and bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) have been proposed as a type of ideal candidate. Research on BMSCs directional cardiomyogenic differentiation ex vivo can offer great theoretical and the clinical significance for cell therapy used in heart diseases. For this reason the present study investigated 5-azacytidine-induced or biological-induced cardiomyogenic differentiation of BMSCs in vitro and determined the alterations of growth properties in BMSCs produced by 5-azacytidine. We also established different modes imitating myocardial microenvironment to evaluate the underlying mechanisms of BMSCs commitment cardiomyogenic differentiation. MethodsBMSCs and neonatal cardiomyocytes were isolated and cultured in vitro. Passage-4 BMSCs were used for experiments. Two groups were divided as biological induction group and chemical induction group. In the biological induction group, we induced BMSCs in three different ways for 6 days: (1)with neonatal cardiomyocytes in direct cell-to-cell coculture system, (2)BMSCs and cardiomyocytes were cultured in two chambers separated as indirect coculture system, (3)BMSCs were...