Blebbistatin protects iPSC-CMs from hypercontraction and facilitates automated patch-clamp based electrophysiological study

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

Recently, there have been great advances in cardiovascular channelopathy modeling and drug safety pharmacology using human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs). The automated patch-clamp (APC) technique overcomes the disadvantages of the manual patch-clamp (MPC) technique, which is labor intensive and gives low output. However, the application of the APC platform is still limited in iPSC-CM based research, due to the difficulty in maintaining the high quality of single iPSC-CMs during dissociation and recording. In this study, we improved the method for single iPSC-CM preparation by applying 2.5 µM blebbistatin (BB, an excitation–contraction coupling uncoupler) throughout APC procedures (dissociation, filtration, storage, and recording). Under non-BB buffered condition, iPSC-CMs in suspension showed a severe bleb-like morphology. However, BB-supplement led to significant improvements in morphology and INa recording, and we even obtained several CMs that showed spontaneous action potentials with typical morphology. Furthermore, APC faithfully recapitulated the single-cell electrophysiological phenotypes of iPSC-CMs derived from Brugada syndrome patients, as detected with MPC. Our study indicates that APC is capable of replacing MPC in the modeling of cardiac channelopathies using human iPSC-CMs by providing high-quality data with higher throughput.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number102565
JournalStem cell research
Volume56
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2021
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

PubMed 34638057

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Keywords

  • Automated patch-clamp, Blebbistatin, Brugada syndrome, Calcium paradox, iPSC-derived cardiomyocyte, Sodium current