Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 2 pp 2231—2250
Matrix stiffness regulates myocardial differentiation of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells
- 1 Department of Stomatology, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Jilin University, Changchun, China
- 2 The Key Laboratory of Pathobiology, Ministry of Education, College of Basic Medical Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun, China
- 3 College of Clinical Medicine, Jilin University, Changchun, China
- 4 Key Laboratory of Organ Regeneration and Transplantation of Ministry of Education, The First Hospital, Jilin University, Changchun, China
- 5 National-Local Joint Engineering Laboratory of Animal Models for Human Diseases, Changchun, China
Received: April 30, 2020 Accepted: October 20, 2020 Published: December 9, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202244How to Cite
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.