Modeling Atrial Fibrillation with Human iPSCs

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia worldwide; it is associated with increased risk for stroke, heart failure, inconsistent blood supply, and additional heart rhythm problems. Despite recent advances in antiarrhythmic drugs (AADs) therapies, variability in response to AADs in individual patients is caused either by heterogeneity of the underlying electrical substrate in patients or by our inability to select mechanism-based therapies. Currently, it has been increasing interest in developing cellular models of disease that are genetically-matched to specific patients using human induced pluripotent stem cells (human iPSCs). The generation of hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) from patients' peripheral mononuclear blood cells has provided novel insights into underlying mechanisms of inherited arrhythmia syndromes. This mini-review will discuss this innovative genotype-guided approach for Atrial fibrillation (AF) therapy, which would prove to be a formative step for the field of personalized medicine.