Hunter Christopher R, Hudson James E
QIMR Berghofer, 300 Herston Road, Herston, Brisbane, QLD, 4006, Australia.
School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland, QLD, 4072, St Lucia, Australia.
Curr Cardiol Rep. 2025 Jun 19;27(1):97. doi: 10.1007/s11886-025-02246-3.
There are specialised heart populations of macrophages that arise from diverse origins in vivo. Incorporating these into human pluripotent derived cardiac organoids (hCOs) provides a new method to study their role in cardiac function and disease. Herein, we review this topic and propose future directions.
Macrophages are particularly important and exert positive and negative influences during the pathogenesis of disease, and resolution after injury. The heart microenvironment imprints specific functions into cardiac macrophages including efferocytosis of mitochrondria, control of electrical conduction and control of stromal and parenchymal homeostasis in the heart. Initial studies using hCOs has shown that incorporating macrophages improves maturation and disease modelling. We highlight key in vivo functions have been shown by macrophages in hCOs. However, outstanding questions remain and represent exciting research avenues in the future. An important avenue being incorporation of the macrophage phenotypic diversity recently shown in vivo.
体内存在多种来源的心脏特异性巨噬细胞群体。将这些细胞整合到人类多能干细胞衍生的心脏类器官（hCOs）中，为研究它们在心脏功能和疾病中的作用提供了一种新方法。在此，我们对该主题进行综述并提出未来方向。
巨噬细胞尤为重要，在疾病发病机制以及损伤后的恢复过程中发挥着正负两方面的影响。心脏微环境赋予心脏巨噬细胞特定功能，包括线粒体的胞葬作用、电传导控制以及心脏间质和实质内稳态的控制。使用hCOs的初步研究表明，整合巨噬细胞可改善其成熟度和疾病建模。我们强调了巨噬细胞在hCOs中已展现出的关键体内功能。然而，仍存在一些悬而未决的问题，这些问题代表着未来令人兴奋的研究方向。一个重要方向是纳入最近在体内发现的巨噬细胞表型多样性。
