LncRNAs in Cardiomyocyte Maturation: New Window for Cardiac Regenerative Medicine

Cardiomyocyte (CM) maturation, which is characterized by structural, functional, and metabolic specializations, is the last phase of CM development that prepares the cells for efficient and forceful contraction throughout life. Over the past decades, CM maturation has gained increased attention due to the fact that pluripotent stem cell-derived CMs are structurally, transcriptionally, and functionally immature and embryonic-like, which causes a defect in cell replacement therapy. The current challenge is to discover and understand the molecular mechanisms, which control the CM maturation process. Currently, emerging shreds of evidence emphasize the role of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in regulating different aspects of CM maturation, including myofibril maturation, electrophysiology, and Ca(2+) handling maturation, metabolic maturation and proliferation to hypertrophy transition. Here, we describe the structural and functional characteristics of mature CMs. Furthermore, this review highlights the lncRNAs as crucial regulators of different aspects in CM maturation, which have the potential to be used for mature CM production. With the current advances in oligonucleotide delivery; lncRNAs may serve as putative therapeutic targets to produce highly mature CMs for research and regenerative medicine.