Trisomy 21 Alters Cell Proliferation and Migration of iPSC-Derived Cardiomyocytes on Type VI Collagen

Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) are 2000 times more likely to develop a congenital heart defect (CHD) than the typical population Freeman et al. in Am J Med Genet 80:213–217 (1998). The majority of CHDs in individuals with DS characteristically involve the atrioventricular (AV) canal, including the valves and the atrial or ventricular septum. Type VI collagen (COLVI) is the primary structural component in the developing septa and endocardial cushions, with two of the three genes encoding for COLVI located on human chromosome 21 and upregulated in Down syndrome (von Kaisenberg et al. in Obstet Gynecol 91:319–323, 1998; Gittenberger-De Groot et al. in Anatom Rec Part A 275:1109–1116, 2023).

To investigate the effect of COLVI dosage on cardiomyocytes with trisomy 21, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) from individuals with DS and age- and sex-matched controls were differentiated into cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CM) and plated on varying concentrations of COLVI.

Real time quantitative PCR showed decreased expression of cardiac-specific genes of DS iPSC-CM lines compared to control iPSC-CM. As expected, DS iPSC-CM had increased expression of genes on chromosome 21, including COL6A1, COL6A2, as well as genes not located on chromosome 21, namely COL6A3, HAS2 and HYAL2. We found that higher concentrations of COLVI result in decreased proliferation and migration of DS iPSC-CM, but not control iPSC-CM.

These results suggest that the increased expression of COLVI in DS may result in lower migration-driven elongation of endocardial cushions stemming from lower cell proliferation and migration, possibly contributing to the high incidence of CHD in the DS population.