Poster #043
A Marker-Based Strategy to Test Sinoatrial Nodal Cell Differentiation
Mentor: Amitoj Singh Sawhney, Sean M. Wu, M.D., Ph.D.
Within our heart reside specialized nerve-like cardiac muscle cells called sinoatrial nodal cells (SAN) that maintain proper heart rhythm. Currently, we are attempting to bioengineer a human heart to treat arrhythmia but lack a proper procedure to determine the efficacy of SAN cell differentiation. We performed a comparison of SAN cell differentiation at days 22 and 40 with a wild-type human induced pluripotent stem cell line and tracked the expression of TNNT2 and SHOX2. These identify cardiomyocytes and SAN cells, respectively. On day 22, expression was observed of SHOX2 in both ventricular and SAN cells, whereas only SAN cells retain expression of SHOX2 was observed on day 40. These results indicate how SHOX2 can be used as a marker for assessing SAN cell differentiation 40 days post-induction. This can be helpful in the comparison between different SAN cell differentiation processes to find an optimal procedure for SAN artery production.