During the last two decades, significant progress has been made in the identification of genetic defects underlying inherited arrhythmia syndromes, which has provided some clinical benefit through elucidation of gene-specific arrhythmia triggers and treatment. However, for most arrhythmia syndromes, clinical management is hindered by insufficient knowledge of the functional consequences of the mutation in question, the pro-arrhythmic mechanisms involved, and hence the most optimal treatment strategy. Moreover, disease expressivity and sensitivity to therapeutic interventions often varies between mutations and/or patients, underlining the need for more individualized strategies. The development of the induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology now provides the opportunity for generating iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes (CMs) from human material (hiPSC-CMs), enabling patient- and/or mutation-specific investigations. These hiPSC-CMs may furthermore be employed for identification and assessment of novel therapeutic strategies for arrhythmia syndromes. However, due to their relative immaturity, hiPSC-CMs also display a number of essential differences as compared to adult human CMs, and hence there are certain limitations in their use. We here review the electrophysiological characteristics of hiPSC-CMs, their use for investigating inherited arrhythmia syndromes, and their applicability for identification and assessment of (novel) anti-arrhythmic treatment strategies.
Keywords: Arrhythmias; Cardiomyocytes; Human; Induced pluripotent stem cells; Pharmacology.