Discussion

Simple and robust derivation of spontaneously contracting cardiomyocytes derived from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) would provide a valuable source of cells for basic research into cardiac biology and mechanisms of heart disease as well as applied studies in pharmacological drug discovery and toxicity screening. Currently a number of protocols exist for inducing embryoid bodies (EB) suspension or monolayer cultures of hPSC to differentiate into cardiomyocyte (Iglesias-Garcia et al 2013; Priori et al 2013). These cardiomyocyte differentiation protocols have led to varying results and differing purity levels of cardiomyocytes. To enable consistent differentiation of hPSCs, we developed a simplified cardiomyocyte differentiation media system, consisting of three ready-to-use components. This easy to use cardiac differentiation system is designed for monolayer hPSC affording flexible culture formats and a scalable workflow enabling generation of large numbers of consistent, spontaneously active cardiomyocytes.