Small molecules and human cardiomyogenesis: Is there a bottleneck in current research?

Human pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocytes (hPSCderived CMs) have a vast potential in drug discovery, disease modeling and regenerative medicine. In recent years various differentiation protocols for hPSCderived CMs have been developed. Most of them utilize the modulation of human cardiomyogenesis via smallmolecule compounds. However, setbacks to the largescale application of hPSCderived CMs still abound: insufficient insight into important signaling pathways for cardiac lineagespecific differentiation and identification of suitable smallmolecule modulators; inconsistent results due to unstandardised culturing techniques; lack of effective maturation of hPSCderived CMs in vitro. So is there a bottleneck in current research? This paper attempts to answer this question.