New publication: Cardiac cell culture on MEAs

Culturing of cardiomyocytes on MEAs has been shown in the 1970’s by Thomas et al. Today’s paper, published in Nature Scientific Reports by Trantidou et al, shows a new step in the development of culture of cardiomyocytes.

Isotropic versus anisotropic arrangement of cells makes a huge difference in signal propagation and other properties of the cell culture. This paper shows in a very impressive way that signal  propagation patterns can be modified by the arrangement of the cells and furthermore the phenotypic arrangement of the cells, especially the sarcomeric arrangement, looks completely different in an anisotropic arrangement of cells.

The patterning structure on MEAs have been shown to influence the maturity, arrangement and signal propagation of cardiomyocytes on microelectrode arrays and thus represent a very important step forward towards a more morphological phenotypically-representative way of culturing cardiomyocytes.