Hananeh Fonoudi, Meghdad Yeganeh, Faranak Fattahi, Zaniar Ghazizadeh, Hassan Rassouli, Mehdi Alikhani, Bahareh Adhami Mojarad, Hossein Baharvand, Ghasem Hosseini Salekdeh, Nasser Aghdami

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) have the potential to provide an unlimited source of cardiomyocytes, which are invaluable resources for drug or toxicology screening, medical research, and cell therapy. Currently a number of obstacles exist such as the insufficient efficiency of differentiation protocols, which should be overcome before hESC-derived cardiomyocytes can be used for clinical applications. Although the differentiation efficiency can be improved by the genetic manipulation of hESCs to over-express cardiac-specific transcription factors, these differentiated cells are not safe enough to be applied in cell therapy. Protein transduction has been demonstrated as an alternative approach for increasing the efficiency of hESCs differentiation toward cardiomyocytes.