Progress in multicellular human cardiac organoids for clinical applications

Abstract

Advances in self-organizing cardiac organoids to recapitulate human cardiogenesis have provided a powerful tool for unveiling human cardiac development, studying cardiovascular diseases, testing drugs, and transplantation. Here, we highlight the recent remarkable progress on multicellular cardiac organoids and review the current status for their practical applications. We then introduce key readouts and tools for assessing cardiac organoids for clinical applications, address major challenges, and provide suggestions for each assessment method. Lastly, we discuss the current limitations of cardiac organoids as miniature models of the human heart and suggest a direction for moving forward toward building the mini-heart from cardiac organoids.