HS V. Chen, M.D., PhD

Bio

Huei-sheng V. Chen, PhD, BMED, associate professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine, focuses on establishing clinically relevant cardiac arrhythmogenic disease models in a dish using patient-specific iPSCs, specifically the electrophysiological (EP) and metabolic development and maturation of cardiomyocytes (CMs) and neurons on behalf of the Krannert Cardiovascular Research Center. He is actively investigating factors that control or guide EP/metabolic maturation of primitive CMs derived from human embryonic stem cell (hESC) or induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines.

Achievements

• Established several cardiac disease-specific iPSC lines from human fibroblasts or peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of patients with arrhythmogenic diseases, such as Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia/cardiomyopathy (ACM), Brugada Syndrome, Dilated Cardiomyopathy with Lamin A/C mutations, Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, Kearns-Sayre Syndrome etc., to model human cardiac diseases in a dish.
• Cultivated the first metabolic maturation-based cardiac disease model in vitro using patient-specific iPSCs (Nature 2013).
• Established several co-culture systems of human iPSC-derived CMs with cells derived from neural crest stem cells, cardiac mesenchymal stromal cells or endothelial progenitor cells to elucidate factors from non-CMs that affect maturation of hESC-/hiPSC-CMs. Main emphasis is placed on interactions between Non-CMs and CMs, which affect embryonic cardiac development and contribute to arrhythmogenesis in adults.