Abigail Cordiner

Advisor

Sean Palecek

Current Research

Directed Differentiation of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells to Cardiomyocytes Using Single Cell Level Reprogramming

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) derived cardiomyocytes provide a promising avenue for disease modeling, drug discover, and potential therapeutics. However, current differentiation methods for cardiomyocytes have variable yields. This posses issues for wide spread use in research and issues for manufacture. To reduce variable, I am creating stem cell lines that are primed to undergo differentiation to cardiomyocytes. To do this, we will integrate gene constructs to induce activation or inhibition of the necessary pathways at the necessary point of the differentiation. These cell lines will only require one interventional step to start the differentiation instead of multiple reducing handling as will as making co-differentiation possible.