Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Stem Cells. Jun 26, 2015; 7(5): 883-893
Published online Jun 26, 2015. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v7.i5.883
New model for cardiomyocyte sheet transplantation using a virus-cell fusion technique
Yuto Takahashi, Daihachiro Tomotsune, Sakiko Takizawa, Fengming Yue, Mika Nagai, Tadayuki Yokoyama, Kanji Hirashima, Katsunori Sasaki
Yuto Takahashi, Daihachiro Tomotsune, Fengming Yue, Kanji Hirashima, Katsunori Sasaki, Department of Histology and Embryology, Shinshu University School of Medicine, Matsumoto, Nagano 390-8621, Japan
Daihachiro Tomotsune, Katsunori Sasaki, Institute for Biomedical Sciences, Interdisciplinary Cluster for Cutting Edge Research, Shinshu University, Matsumoto, Nagano 390-8621, Japan
Sakiko Takizawa, Mika Nagai, Tadayuki Yokoyama, Bourbon Corporation, Kashiwazaki, Niigata 945-8611, Japan
Author contributions: Takahashi Y designed and performed the majority of the experiments, interpreted the data, and revised the article; Tomotsune D and Yue F helped to design the experiments, obtain the data, and interpret the results; Takizawa S, Nagai M and Yokoyama T provided technical assistance in obtaining the data; Hirashima K was associated with completing the article; Sasaki K helped to design the experiments and wrote the article.
Supported by A Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science and Sports, No. 24240076.
Ethics approval: The study was reviewed and approved by the Animal Care Committee of Shinshu University, which belongs to an institution of the university as well as the Animal Center of Shinshu University and referees a research plan on the view of ethics, science and animal welfare.
Institutional animal care and use committee: All procedures were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Animal Center of Shinshu University. It is the same institution as The Animal Care Committee of Sinshu University (Approved protocol number: 210018; 240025).
Conflict-of-interest: All authors have declared that no conflicts of interest exist.
Data sharing: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Katsunori Sasaki, MD, Department of Histology and Embryology, Shinshu University School of Medicine, 3-1-1 Asahi, Matsumoto, Nagano 390-8621, Japan. katsmd@shinshu-u.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-263-372589 Fax: +81-263-373093
Received: October 17, 2014
Peer-review started: October 20, 2014
First decision: December 17, 2014
Revised: March 6, 2015
Accepted: April 1, 2015
Article in press: April 7, 2015
Published online: June 26, 2015
Processing time: 255 Days and 17.7 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: It is very important to produce close contacts between transplanted cell sheets and host cells without fibrous invasion for tissue reconstruction and function. Unfortunately, cellular transplantation research has not focused on this problem and convenient methods have not yet been developed. In this study using hemagglutinating virus of Japan envelope, transplanted cardiomyocyte sheets were placed in direct contact with host skeletal muscles. By adding NaOH maceration of connective tissues, rich, largely-movable, beating domains were observed. Histological observations revealed successful formation of close contacts between the two cell types. This paper proposes a new idea of introducing artificial cell fusion into cellular transplantation methods.