Efficient Large-Scale 2D Culture System for Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells and Differentiated Cardiomyocytes

Summary: Cardiac regenerative therapies utilizing human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) are hampered by ineffective large-scale culture. hiPSCs were cultured in multilayer culture plates (CPs) with active gas ventilation (AGV), resulting in stable proliferation and pluripotency. Seeding of 1 × 106 hiPSCs per layer yielded 7.2 × 108 hiPSCs in 4-layer CPs and 1.7 × 109 hiPSCs in 10-layer CPs with pluripotency. hiPSCs were sequentially differentiated into cardiomyocytes (CMs) in a two-dimensional (2D) differentiation protocol. The efficiency of cardiac differentiation using 10-layer CPs with AGV was 66%–87%. Approximately 6.2–7.0 × 108 cells (4-layer) and 1.5–2.8 × 109 cells (10-layer) were obtained with AGV. After metabolic purification with glucose- and glutamine-depleted and lactate-supplemented media, a massive amount of purified CMs was prepared. Here, we present a scalable 2D culture system using multilayer CPs with AGV for hiPSC-derived CMs, which will facilitate clinical applications for severe heart failure in the near future. : In this article, Fujita and colleagues show that human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) and hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) are stably and efficiently produced using multilayer culture plates with an active gas ventilation system because of stable CO2 and O2 concentration in culture media. Large numbers of obtained hiPSC-CMs are metabolically purified under glucose- and glutamine-depleted and lactate-supplemented conditions. Keywords: iPSCs, regenerative medicine, cardiomyocytes, purification, large scale, 2D cultur