Single cell determination of cardiac microtissue structure and function using light sheet microscopy

Native cardiac tissue is comprised of heterogeneous cell populations that work cooperatively for proper tissue function; thus, engineered tissue models have moved toward incorporating multiple cardiac cell types in an effort to recapitulate native multicellular composition and organization. Cardiac tissue models comprised of stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes require inclusion of non-myocytes to promote stable tissue formation, yet the specific contributions of the supporting non-myocyte population on the parenchymal cardiomyocytes and cardiac microtissues have yet to be fully dissected. This gap can be partly attributed to limitations in technologies able to accurately study the individual cellular structure and function that comprise intact 3D tissues. The ability to interrogate the cell-cell interactions in 3D tissue constructs has been restricted by conventional optical imaging techniques that fail to adequately penetrate multicellular microtissues with sufficient spatial resolution. Light sheet fluorescence microscopy overcomes these constraints to enable single cell-resolution structural and functional imaging of intact cardiac microtissues. Multicellular spatial distribution analysis of heterotypic cardiac cell populations revealed that cardiomyocytes and cardiac fibroblasts were randomly distributed throughout 3D microtissues. Furthermore, calcium imaging of live cardiac microtissues enabled single-cell detection of cardiomyocyte calcium activity, which showed that functional heterogeneity correlated with spatial location within the tissues. This study demonstrates that light sheet fluorescence microscopy can be utilized to determine single-cell spatial and functional interactions of multiple cell types within intact 3D engineered microtissues, thereby facilitating the determination of structure-function relationships at both tissue-level and single-cell resolution.