October 6, 2017
Keio University School of Medicine
A research group from the Keio University School of Medicine, led by Project Assistant Professor Shugo Tohyama, Project Associate Professor Jun Fujita, and Professor Keiichi Fukuda of the Department of Internal Medicine (Cardiology), has succeeded in the mass culture of human iPS cells and differentiated cardiomyocytes by using special multi-layer adhesion culture plates.
When conditions such as myocardial infarction and dilated cardiomyopathy become severe, hundreds of millions of cardiomyocytes are lost. However, mammals, including humans, do not possess the self-regenerative ability to restore these lost cardiomyocytes.
Because embryonic stem cells (ES cells) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) possess pluripotency—the ability to differentiate into most of the cell types that constitute the body—there are high hopes for the realization of "regenerative medicine" for such diseases, which involves transplanting therapeutic cells created ex vivo into the body. However, realizing cardiac regenerative medicine requires the production of a large quantity of highly safe cardiomyocytes, and this has been a major hurdle for clinical application.
This research group has succeeded in the mass culture of human iPS cells and differentiated cardiomyocytes by combining multi-layer adhesion culture plates with a forced-air ventilation system. This method makes it possible to produce approximately one billion human iPS cells or differentiated cardiomyocytes in a single culture.
This research outcome is expected to solve the major challenge of producing a large quantity of highly safe cardiomyocytes and greatly accelerate the realization of cardiac regenerative medicine.
The results of this research were published in the American scientific journal "Stem Cell Reports" on October 5, 2017, at noon (US Eastern Time).
Please see below for the full press release.