No Evidence of Transdifferentiation of Human Endothelial Progenitor Cells Into Cardiomyocytes After Coculture With Neonatal Rat Cardiomyocytes

Abstract

No convincing evidence of transdifferentiation of huEPCs into cardiomyocytes was obtained. Although we cannot exclude that recent contrary data may be due to slightly different culture protocols, our study has revealed that recently applied standard analysis tools including FACS and wide-field fluorescence microscopy are not sufficient to demonstrate transdifferentiation in coculture settings and can lead to misinterpretation of the data obtained solely with these methods.