The main research focus of Dr. Chen's lab is on the electrophysiological (EP) and metabolic development and maturation of cardiomyocytes (CMs). His lab also successfully established several cardiac disease-specific induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines from human fibroblasts or blood cells of patients with arrhythmogenic diseases such as Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia, Brugada Syndrome, Dilated/Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy etc., to model human cardiac diseases in a dish. They have recently established the first metabolic maturation-based cardiac disease model in vitro using patient-specific iPSCs. Additionally, they established several co-culture systems of hESC-derived CMs with cells derived from neural or endothelial progenitor cells so as to elucidate factors from non-CMs that induce maturation of hESC-CMs. The main emphasis is placed on the neuro-cardiac interactions, which affect embryonic cardiac development and contribute to arrhythmogenesis in adults.
