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Title: Cardiac Toxicity From Ethanol Exposure in Human-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocytes.

Authors: Rampoldi, Antonio; Singh, Monalisa; Wu, Qingling; Duan, Meixue; Jha, Rajneesh; Maxwell, Joshua T; Bradner, Joshua M; Zhang, Xiaoyu; Saraf, Anita; Miller, Gary W; Gibson, Greg; Brown, Lou Ann; Xu, Chunhui

Published In Toxicol Sci, (2019 05 01)

Abstract: Alcohol use prior to and during pregnancy remains a significant societal problem and can lead to developmental fetal abnormalities including compromised myocardia function and increased risk for heart disease later in life. Alcohol-induced cardiac toxicity has traditionally been studied in animal-based models. These models have limitations due to physiological differences from human cardiomyocytes (CMs) and are also not suitable for high-throughput screening. We hypothesized that human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived CMs (hiPSC-CMs) could serve as a useful tool to study alcohol-induced cardiac defects and/or toxicity. In this study, hiPSC-CMs were treated with ethanol at doses corresponding to the clinically relevant levels of alcohol intoxication. hiPSC-CMs exposed to ethanol showed a dose-dependent increase in cellular damage and decrease in cell viability, corresponding to increased production of reactive oxygen species. Furthermore, ethanol exposure also generated dose-dependent increased irregular Ca2+ transients and contractility in hiPSC-CMs. RNA-seq analysis showed significant alteration in genes belonging to the potassium voltage-gated channel family or solute carrier family, partially explaining the irregular Ca2+ transients and contractility in ethanol-treated hiPSC-CMs. RNA-seq also showed significant upregulation in the expression of genes associated with collagen and extracellular matrix modeling, and downregulation of genes involved in cardiovascular system development and actin filament-based process. These results suggest that hiPSC-CMs can be a novel and physiologically relevant system for the study of alcohol-induced cardiac toxicity.

PubMed ID: 31059573 Exiting the NIEHS site

MeSH Terms: No MeSH terms associated with this publication

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