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Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 2|pp 2231—2250

Matrix stiffness regulates myocardial differentiation of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells

Yingying Sun1,2, Jingwei Liu3, Ziran Xu2, Xiaoxuan Lin2, Xiaoling Zhang4,5, Lisha Li2, Yulin Li2
  • 1Department of Stomatology, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Jilin University, Changchun, China
  • 2The Key Laboratory of Pathobiology, Ministry of Education, College of Basic Medical Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun, China
  • 3College of Clinical Medicine, Jilin University, Changchun, China
  • 4Key Laboratory of Organ Regeneration and Transplantation of Ministry of Education, The First Hospital, Jilin University, Changchun, China
  • 5National-Local Joint Engineering Laboratory of Animal Models for Human Diseases, Changchun, China
* Equal contribution
Received: April 30, 2020Accepted: October 20, 2020Published: December 9, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202244

Copyright: © 2021 Sun et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Myocardial infarction is a cardiovascular disease with high mortality. Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) with strong self-renewal capacity and multipotency, provide the possibility of replacing injured cardiomyocytes. hUC-MSCs were cultured on polyacrylamide hydrogels with stiffnesses corresponding to Young's modulus of 13-16kPa and 62-68kPa which mimic the stiffnesses of healthy heart tissue and fibrotic myocardium. The expression of early myocardial markers Nkx2.5, GATA4, Mesp1 and the mature myocardial markers cTnT, cTnI, α-actin were detected by RT-PCR and Western Blot, which showed that soft matrix (13-16 kPa) tended to induce the differentiation of hUC-MSCs into myocardium, compared with stiff matrix (62-68 kPa). Piezos are mechanically sensitive non-selective cation channels. The expression of Piezo1 increased with the stiffness gradient of 1-10kPa, 13-16kPa, 35-38kPa and 62-68kPa on the 1st day, but Piezo2 expression was irregular. The expression of integrin β1 and calcium ions were also higher on stiff substrate than on soft substrate. hUC-MSCs tend to differentiate into myocardium on the matrix stiffness of 13-16 kPa. The relationship among matrix stiffness, Piezo1 and myocardial differentiation needs further validation.