Fig 1. Schematic overview of the hypothesis that recombinant human collagen-based microspheres mitigate the conduction slowing induced by pASC.

From previous work we know that rASC and hASC induce conduction slowing through direct-electrotonic-coupling (1) and that pASC paracrine factors alone can induce conduction slowing in NRVM monolayers (2). We hypothesize that the microspheres will buffer the pASC paracrine factors, and mitigate the conduction slowing (3). The mitigating effect can also be achieved when the pASC are loaded onto the microspheres (4). When rASC or hASC are loaded onto the microspheres conduction slowing will still occur as these cells induce conduction slowing through direct-electrotonic-coupling(5). Abbreviations: hASC: human adipose tissue-derived stromal cells, NRVM; neonatal rat ventricular myocytes, pASC: porcine adipose tissue-derived stromal cells, and rASC: rat adipose tissue-derived stromal cells.