title: Criticality of the biological and physical stimuli array inducing resident cardiac stem cell determination.
abstract: The replacement of injured cardiac contractile cells with stem cell-derived functionally efficient cardiomyocytes has been envisaged as the resolutive treatment for degenerative heart diseases. Nevertheless, many technical issues concerning the optimal procedures to differentiate and engraft stem cells remain to be answered before heart cell therapy could be routinely used in clinical practice. So far, most studies have been focused on evaluating the differentiative potential of different growth factors without considering that only the synergistic cooperation of biochemical, topographic, chemical, and physical factors could induce stem cells to adopt the desired phenotype. The present study demonstrates that the differentiation of cardiac progenitor cells to cardiomyocytes does not occur when cells are challenged with soluble growth factors alone, but requires strictly controlled procedures for the isolation of a progenitor cell population and the artifactual recreation of a microenvironment critically featured by a fine-tuned combination of specific biological and physical factors. Indeed, the scaffold geometry and stiffness are crucial in enhancing growth factor differentiative effects on progenitor cells. The exploitation of this concept could be essential in setting up suitable procedures to fabricate functionally efficient engineered tissues. Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest is found at the end of this article.
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio di Cardiologia Molecolare e Cellulare, Dipartimento di Medicina Interna, Università di Roma Tor Vergata, Via Montpellier, 1, 00133 Roma, Italy.
authors.forename: Giancarlo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Forte
authors.forename: Felicia
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Carotenuto
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pagliari
authors.forename: Stefania
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pagliari
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cossa
authors.forename: Roberta
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fiaccavento
authors.forename: Arti
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ahluwalia
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Vozzi
authors.forename: Bruna
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Vinci
authors.forename: Annalucia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Serafino
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rinaldi
authors.forename: Enrico
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Traversa
authors.forename: Luciana
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Carosella
authors.forename: Marilena
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Minieri
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Di Nardo
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D001672:Biocompatible Materials / Q000737:chemistry; D001854:Bone Marrow Cells / Q000166:cytology; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D005260:Female; D036341:Intercellular Signaling Peptides and Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009200:Myocardial Contraction; D032383:Myocytes, Cardiac / Q000166:cytology*; D010641:Phenotype; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry; D013234:Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology*
chemical_list: D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D036341:Intercellular Signaling Peptides and Proteins; D011108:Polymers