Abstract 18251: Establishment of an in vitro Platform, the Hydrogel Mattress, to Enhance Maturation and Evaluate Contractile Function of Individual hiPSC-CMs

Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) have great potential as tools for cell based therapy, disease modeling and drug discovery. However, their contractile properties have not been routinely evaluated; as methods to do so are cumbersome and not easily translated to standard laboratories. We sought to develop a more efficient protocol to evaluate hiPSC-CM mechanical properties, at the single cell level. Individual hiPSC-CMs were cultured on a hydrogel based platform, termed the hydrogel mattress, and their cellular contractile properties were evaluated using video based edge detection (Figure A). We found individual hiPSC-CMs maintained for 5 days on the mattress assumed an elongated shape (Figure B) and exhibited robust, reproducible cell shortening (~10% versus u003c1% for standard culture). We further found hiPSC-CM cellular contraction and peak cell shortening amplitude was comparable to that of freshly isolated adult rabbit and mouse ventricular CMs (Figure C). In addition...