Cardiomyocytes from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) have the ability to advance specificity of in vitro assays for drug discovery and safety pharmacology. They may also provide a superior cell source for envisioned cell therapies to repair damaged hearts. All applications will require the production of cardiomyocytes (CMs) by robust upscalable bioprocesses via industry-compliant technologies. This paper describes a detailed procedure for producing hPSC-CMs in stirred tank bioreactors in 100 ml process scale. The strategy combines both hPSC expansion in suspension culture and, directly followed by, cardiogenic differentiation using small molecule-Wnt pathway modulators. We also provide a protocol describing how to plan and expand the pluripotent stem cells to enable parallel inoculation of 4× 150 ml parallel bioreactor differentiations, potentially producing more than 240 × 106 cardiomyocytes in 22 days.
Keywords: Bioreactor; Cardiac differentiation; Cardiomyocytes; Human pluripotent stem cells; Process development.