Epicardium-Derived Tbx18+ CDCs Transplantation Improve Heart Function in Infarcted Mice

作者：Guo, Zhenglong; Geng, Mengyuan; Qin, Litao; Hao, Bingtao^*; Liao, Shixiu^*

来源：Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine, 2022, 8: 744353.

DOI：10.3389/fcvm.2021.744353

• epicardium
• CDCs
• epicardial cells
• Tbx18
• hTERT
• myocardial infarction

Cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs) constitute a cardiac stem cell pool, a promising therapeutics in treating myocardial infarction (MI). However, the cell source of CDCs remains unclear. In this study, we isolated CDCs directly from adult mouse heart epicardium named primary epicardium-derived CDCs (pECDCs), which showed a different expression profile compared with primary epicardial cells (pEpiCs). Interestingly, pECDCs highly expressed T-box transcription factor 18 (Tbx18) and showed multipotent differentiation ability in vitro. Human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) transduction could inhibit aging-induced pECDCs apoptosis and differentiation, thus keeping a better proliferation capacity. Furthermore, immortalized epicardium CDCs (iECDCs) transplantation extensively promote cardiogenesis in the infracted mouse heart. This study demonstrated epicardium-derived CDCs that may derive from Tbx18(+) EpiCs, which possess the therapeutic potential to be applied to cardiac repair and regeneration and suggest a new kind of CDCs with identified origination that may be followed in the developing and injured heart.

• 单位
  南方医科大学; 郑州大学