Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC), including embryonic stem cells (ESC) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), possess the capability of differentiating into all derivatives of the three germ layers. Given that adult cardiomyocytes do not typically proliferate, hPSC can potentially provide an unlimited supply of cardiomyocytes. The cardiomyocyte derived from hPSC can be used for drug screening, toxicity testing, and developmental studies.

The spontaneous cardiac differentiation of hPSC is inefficient, with less than 1% of cardiomyocytes present in the culture. The differentiation process can be significantly enhanced by adding growth factors (BMP4, activin A, and FGF2 etc.), and small molecules, or using mouse END-2 cell-conditioned medium. The appropriate temporal addition of growth factors is also critic for cardiac differentiation. The Wnt signaling pathway is one of the key regulators in cardiac differentiation of hPSC. Modulating the Wnt signaling activity at different stages of differentiation is sufficient to drive hPSC to differentiate into cardiomyocytes.

ScienCell’s Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Cardiomyocyte Differentiation Kit (PSCCDK) is specially designed to differentiate hPSC to cardiomyocytes at a high efficiency, combining growth factor induction with the temporal modulation of canonical Wnt signaling by small molecules. The kit efficiently converts monolayer-cultured pluripotent stem cells to contracting cardiomyocytes within 15 days under serum-free and feeder-free conditions. With the PSCCDK there is no need for the intermediate embryoid body formation. The kit contains 3 differentiation media, 1 basal medium, and 1 growth supplement. One kit is enough to differentiate 2 12-well plates of cells.

The PSCCDK kit is developed using hESC WA09 (H9) cultured in STEMium® medium (Cat. #5801). We consistently get a sheet of cardiomyocytes from H9 cells. Using the kit, we are also able to derive contracting clusters from a hiPSC line which is generated from human dermal fibroblasts using mRNA reprogramming technology. The hPSC-derived cardiomyocyte cells can be passaged and further enriched using our Cardiomyocyte Selective Medium (Cat. #5911).