AUTHOR=Guo Zhenglong , Geng Mengyuan , Qin Litao , Hao Bingtao , Liao Shixiu 

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

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine

VOLUME=Volume 8 - 2021

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cardiovascular-medicine/articles/10.3389/fcvm.2021.744353

DOI=10.3389/fcvm.2021.744353

ISSN=2297-055X

ABSTRACT=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. Here, we firstly isolated CDCs directly from adult mouse heart epicardium named pECDCs, which showed a different expression profile compared with primary heart Epicardial cells (pEpiCs). Interestingly, pECDCs highly expressed T-box transcription factor (Tbx18), and showed multipotent differentiation ability in vitro. hTERT transduction could inhibit aging induced ECDCs apoptosis and differentiation, thus keeping a better proliferation capacity. Futhermore, iECDCs transplantation extensively promoting cardiogenesis in the infracted mouse heart. Our study demonstrated epicardium-derived CDCs may represent heart Tbx18+ epicardial related cells, 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 injuried heart.