Volume 30, No 7, Jul 2020

ISSN: 1001-0602 
EISSN: 1748-7838 2018 
impact factor 17.848* 
(Clarivate Analytics, 2019)

Volume 30 Issue 7, July 2020: 626-629   |  Open Access

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The cell surface marker CD36 selectively identifies matured, mitochondria-rich hPSC-cardiomyocytes

Ellen Ngar-Yun Poon¹, Xiao-ling Luo², Sarah E. Webb³, Bin Yan ^4,5 ,Rui Zhao⁶, Stanley Chun Ming Wu⁷, Yong Yang ^8,9 , Peng Zhang²,Huajun Bai², Jiaofang Shao ¹⁰, Ching Man Chan³,Godfrey Chi-Fung Chan⁷, Suk Ying Tsang ^6,11 ,Rebekah L. Gundry ^12,15 , Huang-Tian Yang ^2,13 and Kenneth R. Boheler ^8,14

¹Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, and Centre for Cardiovascular Genomics and Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), HKSAR, China; ²CAS Key Laboratory of Tissue Microenvironment and Tumor, Laboratory of Molecular Cardiology, Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), CAS, Shanghai, China; ³Division of Life Science and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, HKSAR, China; ⁴Department of Computer Science, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), HKSAR, China; ⁵Intervention and Cell Therapy Center, Peking University Shenzhen Hospital, Shenzhen, China; ⁶School of Life
Sciences, CUHK, HKSAR, China; ⁷Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, HKU, HKSAR, China; ⁸School of Biomedical Sciences, HKU, HKSAR, China; ⁹SUSTech Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen, China; ¹⁰ Department of Bioinformatics, School of Biomedical Engineering and Informatics, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China; ¹¹ State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology, CUHK, HKSAR, China; ¹² Department of Biochemistry and Center for Biomedical Mass Spectrometry Research, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA; ¹³ Institute for Stem Cell and Regeneration Medicine, CAS, Beijing, China and 14Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, and Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA and 15Present address: CardiOmics Program, Center for Heart and Vascular Research; Division of Cardiovascular Medicine; and Department of Cellular and Integrative Physiology, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA
Correspondence: Ellen Ngar-Yun Poon (ellen.poon@cuhk.edu.hk) orKenneth R. Boheler (kbohele1@jhmi.edu)

Dear Editor,

Human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-derived cardiomyocytes (CMs) are of significant translational value to in vitro studies of human cardiac development, drug and cardiotoxicity testing and cardiac disease modelling. Differentiation of hPSCs to CMs, however, yields mixed cultures of atrial-, ventricular-, and pacemaker-like cells as well as non-CMs in variable proportions.1 Strategies to enrich CMs from non-CMs and to generate ventricular versus atrial cells have been successful; however, enriched hPSC-CMs are developmentally immature and fail to recapitulate key functional traits that are fundamental to the (patho)physiology of adult CMs.1,2 Moreover, these strategies do not adequately address experimental variabilities caused by differences in the genomes and differentiation capabilities of diverse hPSC lines. One validated approach that overcomes issues of cell heterogeneity and experimental variability is immunophenotyping; however, accessible markers suitable for defining mature, live CMs are lacking. Although cell surface markers such as SIRPA(CD172a) and VCAM1(CD106)3,4 have been used to sort for hPSC-CMs, they do not distinguish between maturation states. Here, we report the identification of CD36 as a cell surface marker of maturation, which can be used to reduce experimental variability and improve drug screens.

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