Tissue microenvironment dictates the state of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived endothelial cells of distinct developmental origin in 3D cardiac microtissues

Abstract

Each tissue and organ in the body has its own type of vasculature. Here we demonstrate that organotypic vasculature for the heart can be recreated in a three-dimensional cardiac microtissue (MT) model composed of human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived cardiomyocytes (CMs), cardiac fibroblasts (CFs) and endothelial cells (ECs). ECs in cardiac MTs upregulated expression of markers enriched in human intramyocardial ECs (iECs), such as CD36, CLDN5, APLNR, NOTCH4, IGFBP3, ARHGAP18, which were previously identified in the single-cell RNA-seq dataset from the human fetal heart (6.5-7 weeks post coitum). We further show that the local microenvironment largely dictates the organ-specific identity of hiPSC-derived ECs: we compared ECs of different developmental origins derived from two distinct mesoderm subtypes (cardiac and paraxial mesoderm) and found that independent of whether the ECs were cardiac or paraxial mesoderm derived, they acquired similar identities upon integration into cardiac microtissues. This was confirmed by single-cell RNA-seq. Overall, the results indicated that whilst the initial gene profile of ECs was dictated by developmental origin, this could be modified by the local tissue environment such that the original identity was lost and the organotypic identity acquired through local environmental signals. This developmental "plasticity" in ECs has implications for multiple pathological and disease states.