Patient-Specific Neurons Reveal Vital Clues About Autism










Patient-Specific Heart Cells Made from Amniotic Fluid Cells Before a Baby is Born

The dream of cardiologists is to have stockpiles of cardiac progenitor cells that could be transplanted into a sick heart and regenerate it. Even more remarkable would be a source of heart cells for newborn babies with congenital heart problems. What about making these cells before they are born? Science fiction?

Probably not. Dr. Shaun M. Kunisaki from Mott Children’s Hospital and the University of Michigan School of Medicine and his colleagues made heart progenitor cells from Amniotic Fluid Cells. These cells were acquired from routine amniocentesis procedures, with proper institutional review board approval.

These amniotic fluid specimens (8–10 ml), which were taken from babies at 20 weeks gestation, were expanded in culture and then reprogrammed toward pluripotency using nonintegrating Sendai virus (SeV) vectors that expressed the four commonly-used reprogramming genes; OCT4, SOX2, cMYC, and KLF4. The resulted induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines were then exposed to cardiogenic differentiation conditions in order to generate spontaneously beating amniotic fluid-derived cardiomyocytes (AF-CMs). AF-CMs were formed with high efficiency.

After 6 weeks, Kunisaki and his team subjected their AF-CMs to a battery of quantitative gene expression experiments. They discovered that their AF-CMs expressed high levels of heart-specific genes (including MYH6, MYL7, TNNT2, TTN, and HCN4). However, Kunisaki and others also found that their AF-CMs consisted of a mixed population of differentiated atrial, ventricular, and nodal cells, as demonstrated by various genes expression profiles.

All AF-CMs were chromosomally normal and had no remnants of the SeV transgenes. Functional characterization of these AF-CMs showed a higher spontaneous beat frequency in comparison with heart cells made from dermal fibroblasts. The AF-CMs also showed normal calcium currents and appropriately responded to neurotransmitters that usually speed up the heart, like norepinephrine.

Collectively, these data suggest that human amniotic fluid-derived cells can be used to produce highly scalable sources of functional, transgene-free, autologous heart cells before child is born. Such an approach may be ideally suited for patients with prenatally diagnosed cardiac anomalies.

The Founder Cell Identity Does Not Affect iPS Cell Differentiation to Hematopoietic Stem Cell Fate

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have many of the characteristics of embryonic stem cells, but are made from mature cells by means of a process called cell reprogramming. To reprogram cells, particular genes are delivered into mature cells, which are then cultured until they h:ave the growth properties of pluripotent cells. Further tests are required to demonstrate that the growing cells actually are iPSCs, but once they pass these tests, these cells can be grown in culture indefinitely and, ideally, differentiated into just about any cell type in our bodies (caveat: some iPSC lines can only differentiate into particular cell lineages). Theoretically, any cell type can be reprogrammed into iPSCs, but work from many laboratories has demonstrated that the identity of the founder cell influences the type of cell into which it can be reprogrammed.

Founder cells can be easily acquired from a donor and come in one of four types: fibroblasts (in skin), keratinocytes (also from skin), peripheral and umbilical cord blood, and dental pulp cells (from baby teeth). A variety of laboratories from around the world have made iPSC lines from a gaggle of different founder cells. Because of the significant influence of founder cells for iPSC characteristics, the use of iPSCs for regenerative medicine and other medical applications requires that the desired iPSC line should be selected based on the founder cell type and the characteristics of the iPSC line.

However, the founder cell identity is not the only factor that affects the characteristics of derived iPSC lines. The methods by which the founder cells are reprogrammed can also profoundly contribute to the differentiation efficiency of iPSC lines. According to Yoshinori Yoshida, Associate Professor at the Center for iPSC Research and Application (CiRA) at Kyoto University, the most commonly used methods of cell reprogramming utilize retroviruses, episomal/plasmids, and Sendai viruses to move genes into cells.

The cells found in blood represent a diverse group of cells that includes red blood cells that carry oxygen, platelets that heal wounds, and white blood cells that fight off infection. All the cells in blood are made by bone marrow-specific stem cells called “hematopoietic stem cells.” The production of clinical grade blood has remained a kind of “holy grail” for cellular reprogramming studies. Some scientists have argued that in order to make good-quality hematopoietic cells, the best founder cells are hematopoietic cells. Is this true? Yoshida and his colleagues examined a very large number of iPSC lines that were made from different founder cells and with differing reprogramming methods.  The results of these experiments were published in the journal Cell Stem Cell (doi:10.1016/j.stem.2016.06.019).

Remarkably, Yoshida and his crew discovered that neither of these factors has a significant effect. What did have a significant effect were the expression of certain genes and the position of particular DNA methylations. These two factors were better indicators of the efficiency at which an iPSC line could differentiate into the hematopoietic stem cells.

“We found the IGF2 (Insulin-like Growth Factor-2) gene marks the beginning of reprogramming to hematopoietic cells”, said Dr. Masatoshi Nishizawa, a hematologist who works in Yoshida’s lab and is the first author of this new study. Higher expression of the IGF2 gene is indicative of iPSCs initiating differentiation into hematopoietic cells. Even though IGF2 itself is not directly related to hematopoiesis, its uptake corresponded to an increase in the expression of those genes involved in directing differentiation into hematopoietic stem cells.

Although IGF2 marked the beginnings of differentiation to hematopoietic lineage, the completion of differentiation was marked by the methylation profiles of the iPS cell DNA. “DNA methylation has an effect on a cell staying pluripotent or differentiating,” explained Yoshida. Completion of the final stages of differentiation was highly correlated with less aberrant methylation during the reprogramming process. Blood founder cells showed a much lesser tendency to display aberrant DNA methylation patterns than did other iPSC lines made from other founder cells. This probably explains why past experiments seemed to indicate that the founder cell contributes to the effectiveness of differentiating iPS cells to the hematopoietic stem cell lineage.

These findings reveal molecular factors that can be used to evaluate the differentiation potential of different iPSC lines, which should, hopefully, expedite the progression of iPSCs to clinical use. Nishizawa expects this work to provide the basis for evaluating iPSC lines for the preparation of other cell types. “I think each cell type will have its own special patterns,” he said.

Large Screening and Analyses of Established Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Lines Finds Rogue Lines

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have come a long way since the first lines were made by Shinya Yamanaka and his colleagues in 2006. Initial successes of iPSCs in animal models generated a good deal of hope that iPSCs might find a place in the annals of regenerative medicine. However, since that time, further work has created doubts about the safety of these cells, since some, though admittedly not all, iPSC lines show some genetic abnormalities. However, as screening techniques have become better and have increased in sensitivity, the possibility of accurately ascertaining the quality of iPSC lines draws closer and closer.

A new paper that appeared in the June 9 edition of the journal Stem Cell Reports by Carolyn Lutzko and others from a multi-institutional research group known as the Progenitor Cell Biology Consortium, have used these new screening technologies to screen large numbers of established iPSC lines. The results were somewhat sobering; about 30 percent of iPSC lines analyzed from 10 research institutions were genetically unstable and not safe for clinical use.

This work comprehensively characterized of a large collection of iPSC lines. The technology to produce safe and effective iPSCs exists. Nevertheless, this does not mean that all iPSC lines were produced safely and effectively. In this paper, Lutzko and her colleagues discovered that some iPSC lines that were made with inferior protocols. Some iPSC lines were contaminated with bacteria or carried mutations associated with cancer.

“It was very surprising to us the high number of unstable cell lines identified in the study, which highlights the importance of setting safety standards for stem cell therapies,” said Carolyn Lutzko, PhD, senior author and director of translational development in the Translational Core Laboratories at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “A good number of the cell lines we studied met quality standards, although the unexpected number of lines that did not meet these standards could not be used for clinical therapies.”

In this paper, Lutzko and her collaborators compared 58 different iPSC lines that had been submitted by various research institutions. The cells were generated with a variety of genes, methods and cells of origin that ranged from skin fibroblasts to infant cord blood cells. All iPSC lines were analyzed for genetic stability, degree of pluripotency, and several other scientific criteria.

In order for an iPSC line to be considered for clinical work, they must exhibit a high degree of genetic stability. Genetically unstable iPSC lines run the risk of form derivatives that can become cancerous, show poor survival, or differentiate into unwanted cell types upon transplantation. It also is essential that iPSC lines exhibit the ability to continuously renew and expand without losing pluripotency or introducing new genetic mutations.

All iPSC lines were also compared to human embryonic stem cell lines in order to compare them to an outside standard.

How did these 58 iPSC lines fare in this rather exacting gauntlet of tests? It depended on several factors. First of all the cell of origin was very important. Skin fibroblasts tended to make rather low-quality iPSC lines, on the average, but cord blood stem cells usually made rather high-quality iPSC lines. Additionally, the specific reprogramming method employed also made a difference. Some of the iPSC lines included in the test were reprogrammed by means of viruses that integrate into the genome of the host cell (24%). Others were reprogrammed with plasmids (64%), which do not integrate into the host cell genome and are lost soon after reprogramming and growth occurs. Others were reprogrammed with modified RNAs (7%), and a few others (5%) were reprogrammed with other types of viruses that do not integrate into the genome of the host cell (Sendai virus). In all cases, the iPSC lines were made by introducing genes into a mature cell that drove that cell to de-differentiate and grow. Slightly different cocktails of genes were used, but the results were largely the same – the induction of pluripotency.  On the average, non-integrating methods of introducing reprogramming genes into cells resulted in higher-quality iPSC lines, with a few notable exceptions.

Pluripotency for each iPSC line was tested by means of implanting undifferentiated iPSCs into nude mice and observing the cells form differentiated tumors called “teratomas.” Teratomas contain tissues derived from all three primary germ layers; endoderm (gut region), ectoderm (epidermis, nerve tissue, etc.) and mesoderm (muscles, blood cells, etc.).

Prior to this study, the prevailing view was that low-quality iPSC lines were not pluripotent and could not form proper teratomas. This hypothesis had not been tested because of the expense of implanting all these iPSC lines into nude mice. To test this hypothesis, Lutzko and her colleagues tested if all iPSC lines, both high and low quality lines, could generate teratomas. Their tests showed that both genetically stable and unstable iPSC lines formed teratomas with cells from all three germ layers. Although genetically unstable iPSC lines demonstrated pluripotency, the concern in a clinical context would be that they also could result in cancer – again emphasizing the need for safe reprogramming methods, according to study authors.

The enormous amount of data generated by these experiments required sophisticated computing for high-level computational analyses. First author, Nathan Salomonis, PhD, a researcher in the Division of Biomedical Informatics at Cincinnati Children’s. Salomonis used computational approaches to collate, examine, and analyze the data and produce large data sets that can compare the different methods of cell programming, the differences in gene regulation between lines, and the functional quality of each iPSC line.

According to Salomonis, his robust data sets uncovered those iPSC lines that had lost their ability to differentiate into particular adult cell types. This massive collection of raw processed data is available through the online web database.

Salomonis said that, in the future, members of this research consortium will test the ability of each iPSCs line to differentiate into specific cell types – such as brain, heart, lung and other cells in the human body. After these data are verified and published, this information will be added to the online database as a public resource.

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells – Addressing Safety Concerns

In 2012, John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.” Since that time, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have largely taken the stem cell scene by storm. Because of the ease with which iPSCs can be made from just about any mature cell type, and because they can be made so more cheaply and faster than embryonic stem cells, they are the perfect pluripotent stem cell for laboratory use. The additional advantage to iPSCs is that can instantly reflect the genetic defect of the patient from whom they are made. Therefore, they are provide excellent model systems for a variety of genetic diseases and provide a kind of “disease in a dish” system by which the cellular and molecular characteristics of a disease can be modeled in cell culture.

In addition to their experimental utility, many scientists have sought to promote iPSCs for clinical purposes. However, before iPSCs can be used in the clinic, their safety must be established beyond question. Despite their success in many animal models (most in rodents), the long-term safety of iPSC derivatives has yet to be firmly demonstrated.

To that end, three different experiments have added to our concerns about the safety of iPSCs. For these and other reasons, several scientists have hypothesized that if iPSCs derivatives are going to be used in a clinical setting, they will need to come from young, healthy donors. In particular, blood cells from umbilical cord blood can be matched to just about any tissue and can be easily converted into iPSCs. Therefore, allogeneic iPSC derivatives seem to be the best way to go about treating particular diseases.

That being said, there are three studies about the safety of iPSC derivatives that make important contributions to the debate.

The first study comes from the laboratory of Shoukhrat Mitalipov at the Oregon Health and Science University. Mitalipov and his team have examined the mitochondrial genomes of iPSCs made from older patients.

Mitochondria are small, vesicles surrounded by two membranes, within cells that are the energy-production structures of most cells (not bacteria). Mitochondria also contain their own DNA molecules that express a variety of mitochondrial-specific genes and their own bacterial-like ribosomes that synthesized the mRNAs made from those genes into proteins. However, the vast majority of mitochondrial proteins are encoded on genes housed in the nucleus.

Mutations in genes encoded by the mitochondrial genome are rather devastating and are responsible for several really nasty (albeit rare) genetic diseases. These mitochondrial genetic diseases include: Mitochondrial myopathy, diabetes and deafness, Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy (includes visual loss beginning in young adulthood, progressive loss of central vision due to degeneration of the optic nerves and retina), Leigh syndrome subacute sclerosing encephalopathy (disease usually begins late in the first year of life, although onset may occur in adulthood; a rapid decline in function occurs and is marked by seizures, altered states of consciousness, dementia, ventilatory failure), neuropathy, ataxia, retinitis pigmentosa, and ptosis (progressive symptoms as described and dementia), Myoneurogenic gastrointestinal encephalopathy (gastrointestinal pseudo-obstruction and neuropathy), Myoclonic epilepsy with ragged red fibers (progressive myoclonic epilepsy, “Ragged Red Fibers” or clumps of diseased mitochondria accumulate in the muscle fiber, short stature, hearing loss, lactic acidosis, exercise intolerance), mitochondrial myopathy, encephalomyopathy, lactic acidosis, stroke-like symptoms (MELAS).

Mitochondrial DNA mutations have long been thought to be a driving force in aging and age-onset diseases. Therefore, if iPSCs are made from older patients, will their starting cells have these mitochondrial mutations?

Taoseng Huang from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center said: “If you want to use iPS cells in a human, you must check for mutations in the mitochondrial genome. Every single cell can be different. Two cells next to each other could have different mutations or different percentages of mutations.”

In this study from Mitalipov’s laboratory, his team derived and sequenced 10 iPS clones from each patient tissue sample to get a better understanding of mitochondrial DNA mutations rates. They took samples of blood and skin samples from healthy subjects and patients with degenerative diseases, who ranged in age from 24-72 years old. In these pools of these sampled cells, the rate of mitochondrial DNA mutations was low.

20 iPS cell lines per patient were profiled. Ten of these lines were derived from skin cells and the other 10 were derived from blood cells. Sequencing of the mitochondrial genomes of the iPSC lines revealed higher numbers of mitochondrial DNA mutations, particularly in cells from patients older than 60 years old. Of the 130 iPSC lines analyzed, 80 percent of them showed mitochondrial mutations and higher percentages of the mitochondria per cell contained mutations.

Such mitochondrial mutations can seriously compromise the ability of derivatives of these iPSC lines to carry out their desired function. Mitalipov in his paper, which was published in Cell Stem Cell, 2016; DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2016.2016.02.005, that all iPSC lines for use in human patients should be screened for mitochondrial mutations.

Graphical abstract-2

One feature not addressed by Mitalipov and his colleagues is whether or not cells that may not show the signs of aging should be used to derived iPSCs, such as particular bone dormant marrow stem cells.

If mitochondrial mutations aren’t bad enough Jennifer E. Phillips-Cremins and her coworkers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science have found that the chromatin structures of iPSCs might prevent them from properly differentiating into particular derivatives.

As previously mentioned in other blog posts, the DNA in the nuclei of our cells is packaged into a compact structure known as chromatin. Chromatin helps cells express those genes it needs to express and shut down other genes whose expression is not needed.

Occasionally, iPSC lines show an inability to differentiate into particular cell types while others have the ability to differentiate into many cell types. According to this study by Phillips-Cremins and her team, defects in DNA packaging might explain these disparities in iPSC lines.

By using experimental and computational techniques, Phillips-Cremins and her graduate student Jonathan Beagan identified chromatin conformations in a variety of iPSC lines. The DNA topology of embryonic stem cells and neural stem cells were also analyzed as comparisons.

“We know there is a link between the topology of the genome and gene expression,” Jennifer Phillips-Cremins, said in a press release. “So this motivated us to explore how the genetic material is reconfigured in three dimensions inside the nucleus during the reprogramming of mature brain cells to pluripotency. We found evidence for sophisticated configurations that differ in important ways between iPS cells and embryonic stem cells.”

The three-dimensional DNA conformations of pluripotent stem cells are reorganized during differentiation. Phillips-Cremin and others discovered that when mature cells are reprogrammed to pluripotent cells, most pluripotency genes reconnect to their enhancers (which are crucial for their expression). However, when these same iPSCs are differentiated into neural progenitor cells, the interactions between pluripotency gene and their enhancers remain in some lines, which should not occur.

“We found marked differences among the heatmaps we generated for each cell type,” said Jonathan Beagan, a graduate student in Phillips-Cremin’s laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. “Our observations are important because they suggest that, if we can push the 3D genome conformation of cells that we are turning into IPSCs to be closer to that of embryonic stem cells, then we can possibly generate IPSCs that match gold-standard pluripotent stem cells more rapidly and efficiently.”

This paper was published in Cell Stem Cell (2016), 18(5): 611–624. Therefore, the chromatin structure of iPSCs is also important.

Finally, another paper reports some good news for iPSCs. Research from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute tracked the genetic mutations acquired by iPSCs when they are made in the laboratory. These cells came from the blood of a 57-year-old male subject.

This research, led by Allan Bradley, showed that mutations arise 10 times less often in iPSCs than they do in cultured laboratory-grown blood cells. Furthermore, non of the iPSC-acquired mutations were in genes known to cause cancer.

Bradley and his colleagues were able to trace the history of every mutation that each cell acquired from its extraction from the body to its reprogramming in the laboratory and propagation in culture.

The techniques utilized in the Bradley laboratory can surely help scientists evaluate the genetic integrity of laboratory-derived iPSCs.

This work was published in PLOS Genetics, 2016; 12(4): e1005932 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1005932.

All in all, it seems that it is possible to make sound iPSC lines, but those lines must be properly screened before they can be used in a clinical setting to treat live patients. These three papers provide new ways to screen iPSC lines for ensure high levels of safety and efficacy.












Adult Directly Reprogrammed With Proteins into Cardiac Progenitor Cells Heal Heart After a Heart Attack and Make New Heart Muscle

Jianjun Wang from Wayne State School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan and Xi-Yong Yu from Guangzhou Medical University and a host of graduate students and postdoctoral research fellows in their two laboratories have teamed up to make human cardiac progenitor cells (CPCs) from human skin fibroblasts through direct reprogramming. Direct reprogramming does not go through a pluripotent intermediate, and, therefore, produces cells that have a low chance of generating tumors.

To begin their study, Wang, and Yu and their colleagues isolated fibroblasts from the lower regions of the skin (dermis) and grew them in culture. Then they reprogrammed these cells in a relatively novel manner. This is a little complicated, but I will try to keep it simple.

Reprogramming cells usually requires scientists to infect cells with recombinant viruses that have been genetically engineered to express particular genes in cells or force cells to take up large foreign DNA. Both of these techniques can work relatively well in the laboratory, but you are left with cells that are filled with foreign DNA or recombinant viruses. It turns out that directly reprogramming cells only requires transient expression of specific genes, and once the cells have recommitted to a different cell fate, the expression of the genes used to get them there can be diminished.

To that end, some enterprising scientists have discovered that inducing cells to up modified proteins can also reprogram cells. Recently a new reagent called the QQ-reagent system can escort proteins across the cell membrane. The QQ-reagent has been patented and can sweep proteins into mammalian cells with high-efficiency and low toxicity (see Li Q, et al (2008) Methods Cell Biol 90:287–325).

Wang and Yu and their coworkers used genetically engineered bacteria to overexpress large quantities of four different proteins: Gata4, Hand2, Mef2c, and Tbx5. Then they mixed these proteins with their cultured human fibroblasts in the presence of the QQ reagent. This reagent drew the proteins into the cells and the fibroblasts were reprogrammed into cardiac progenitor cells (CPCs). Appropriate control experiments showed that cells that were treated with QQ reagent without these proteins were not reprogrammed. Wang and Yu and they research groups also exposed the cells to three growth factors, BMP4 and activin A, to drive the cells to become heart-specific cells, and basic fibroblast growth factor to turn the cells towards a progenitor cell fate.

The next set of experiment was intended to show that their newly reprogrammed were of a cardiac nature. First, the cells clearly expressed heart-specific genes. Flk-1 and Isl-1 are genes that earmark cardiac progenitor cells, and by the eighth day of induction, the vast majority of cells expressed both these genes.


Generation of protein-induced cardiac progenitor cells by modified transcript proteins. (A): Strategy of protein-induced cardiac progenitor cell (piCPC) generation. (B): Cell colonies were initially observed around days 4–8 and could be passaged to many small colonies around day 12. Representative phase contrast images are shown. The control was untreated human dermal fibroblasts in vehicle medium after 8 days. Scale bars = 100 μm. (C): quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis of cardiac progenitor genes Flk-1 and Isl-1 in piCPCs. Fibroblast markers Col1a2 and FSP1 were also detected (∗, p < .05; ∗∗, p < .01 vs. day 0 control; error bars indicate SD; n = 3). (D): Representative fluorescent images are shown with typical cardiac progenitor markers Flk-1 (red) and Isl-1 (green) and fibroblast markers ColI (green) and FSP-1 (S100A4) (green) before and after reprogramming at day 8. DAPI staining was performed to visualize nuclei (blue) and all images were merged. Scale bars, 100 μm. (E): Flow cytometry analysis demonstrated Flk-1 and Isl-1 expressions were increased from d0 to d8 separately. Abbreviations: bFGF, basic fibroblast growth factor; BMP4, bone morphogenetic protein 4; ColI, collagen I; d, day; DAPI, 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole; FSP1, fibroblast-specific protein 1; mGHMT, modified Gata4/Hand2/Mef2c/Tbx5.

Second, cardiac cells can differentiate into three different cell types: heart muscle cells, blood vessels cells, and smooth muscle cells that surround the blood vessels. In mesoderm progenitors made from embryonic stem cells, inhibition of the Wnt signaling pathway can drive such cells to become heart muscle cells (see Chen, et al Nat Chem Biol 5:100–107; Willems E, et al Circ Res 109:360–364; Hudson J, et al Stem Cells Dev 21:1513–1523). However, Wang, Yu and company showed that treating the cells with a small molecule called IWR-1 that inhibits Wnt signaling drove their cells to differentiate into, not only heart muscle cells, but also endothelial (blood vessel) cells and smooth muscle cells when the cells were grown on gelatin coated dishes. When left to differentiate in culture, the cells beat synchronously and released calcium in a wave-like fashion that spread from one cell to another, suggesting that some cells were acting as pacemakers and setting the beat.


Protein-induced cardiac progenitor cells (piCPCs) differentiated into three cardiac lineages: cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells, and smooth muscle cells. (A): Schematic representation of the strategy to differentiate piCPCs in differentiation medium with IWR1 factor. (B): Quantitative data of mRNA expression of cardiac lineage marker genes (∗, p < .05; ∗∗, p < .01; and ∗∗∗, p < .001 vs. day 0 control; error bars indicate SD; n = 3). (C): Immunofluorescent staining for MHC, MYL2, CD31, CD34, smMHC, and αSMA. The combination of the four factors, GHMT, induces abundant MHC and Myl2, and some expression of CD31 and smMHC 28 days after transduction. Nuclei were counter stained with DAPI. Scale bars = 100 μm. (D): Flow cytometry analysis for cTnI, CD31, and smMHC. mGHMT plus IWR1 significantly enhances cTnI expression, and, to a lesser extent, CD31 and smMHC expression. Abbreviations: αSMA, α-smooth muscle actin; BMP4, bone morphogenetic protein 4; cTnI, cardiac troponin I; cTnT, cardiac troponin T; d, day; DAPI, 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole; GHMT, Gata4/Hand2/Mef2c/Tbx5; mGHMT, modified GHMT; MHC, myosin heavy chain; MYL2, myosin light chain 2; smMHC, smooth muscle myosin heavy chain.

Then these cells were transplanted into the heart of mice that had suffered heart attacks. When compared to control hearts that received fluid, but no cells, the hearts of the animals that received protein-induced CPCs showed decreased scarring by 4 weeks after the transplantations. They also showed the growth of new heart muscle. A variety of staining experiments established that the engrafted protein-induced CPCs positive for heart muscle- and endothelial-specific cell markers. These experiments showed that transplantation of cardiac progenitor cells can not only help attenuate remodeling of the left ventricular after a heart attack, but that the protein-induced CPCs (piCPCs) can develop into cells of the cardiac lineage.

In vivo delivery of protein-induced cardiac progenitor cells improves cardiac function after myocardial infarction. (A): EF, FS, LVDd, and LVDs were analyzed by echocardiography (∗, p < .05; ∗∗, p < .01; ∗∗∗, p < .001 vs. relevant 1 week; all data are presented as mean ± SD, n = 8). (B): Transplanted cells were detected by magnetic resonance imaging 4 weeks after myocardial infarction (MI). Red arrow points to the signal loss due to SPIO-labeled cells. (C): Masson trichrome staining on heart sections 4 weeks after MI injection in sham, vehicle, and piCPC groups. Scale bar = 0.5 cm. (D): Immunofluorescent staining for cTnI (red), CD31 (red), and anti-dextran (SPIO, green) of heart sections after piCPCs were transplanted 4 weeks after MI. White arrows point to transplanted cells or colocalization of cTnI or CD31 with SPIO. Scale bars = 100 μm. Abbreviations: cTnI, cardiac troponin I; DAPI, 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole; EF, ejection fraction; FS, fractional shortening; LVDd, left ventricular internal diameter at end-diastole; LVDs, left ventricular internal diameter at end-systole; piCPCs, protein-induced cardiac progenitor cell; SPIO, superparamagnetic iron oxide; W, week.

These are exciting results. It shows that direct reprogramming can occur without introducing genes into cells by means that can complicate the safety of the implanted cells. Also, because the cells are differentiated into progenitor cells, they still have the ability to proliferate and expand their numbers, which is essential for proper regeneration of a damaged tissue.

After a heart attack, the ventricle wall scars over and can become thin. However, piCPCs that have been directly reprogrammed from mature, adult cells can be used to replace dead heart muscle in a living animal.

Despite these exciting advances, further questions remain. For example, are the physiological properties of cells made from piCPCs similar enough to match the functional parameters of the heart into which they are inserting themselves? More work is necessary to answer that question. Functional equivalence is important, since a heart that does not function similarly from one end to the other can become arrhythmic, which is clinically dangerous. Further work is also required to precisely determine how well cells derived from piCPCs mature and coupling with neighboring cells. Therefore, larger animal studies and further studies in culture dishes will be necessary before this technique can come to the clinic. Nevertheless, this is a tremendous start to what will hopefully be a powerful and fruitful technique for healing damaged hearts.

Accelerated Reprogramming and Gene Editing Protocol Can Make Fixed Cells Much Faster

Sara Howden and her colleagues at the Morgridge Institute for Research and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia have devised a protocol that can significantly decrease the time involved in reprogramming mature adult cells while genetically repairing them at the same time. Such an advance is essential for making future therapies possible.

Howden and others demonstrated that genetically repaired cells can be derived from patient skin cells in as little as two weeks. This is much shorter than the multistep approaches that take more than three months.

How were they able to shorten the time necessary to do this? They combined two integral steps in the procedure. Adult cells were reprogrammed to an embryonic stem cell-like state in order to be differentiated into the cells that we want. Secondly, the cells must undergo gene editing in order to correct the disease-causing mutation.

By in this new protocol developed by Howden and her colleagues, they combined the reprogramming and gene editing steps.

To test their new protocol, Howden and her team used cells isolated from a patient with an inherited retinal degeneration disorder, and an infant with severe immunodeficiency. In both cases, the team not only derived induced pluripotent stem cell lines from the adult cells of these patients, but they were also able to repair the genetic lesion that causes the genetic disease.

This protocol might advance transplant medicine by making gene-correction therapies available to patients in a much timelier fashion and at lower cost.

Presently, making induced pluripotent stem cell lines from a patient’s cells, genetically repairing those cells, expanding them, differentiating them, and then isolating the right cells from transplantation, while checking the cells all along the way and properly characterizing them for safety reasons would take too long and cost too much.

With this new approach, however, Howden and others used the CRISPR/Cas9 technology to edit the damaged genes while reprogramming the cells, greatly reducing the time required to make the cells for transplantation.

Faster reprogramming also decreases the amount of time the cells remain in culture, which minimizes the risks of gene instability or epigenetic changes that can sometimes occur when culturing cells outside the human body.

Howden’s next goal is to adapt her protocol to work with blood cells so that blood samples rather than skin biopsies can be used to secure the cells for reprogramming/gene editing procedure. Blood cells also do not require the expansion that skin cells require, which would even further shorten the time needed to make the desired cell types.

The accelerated pace of the reprogramming procedure could make a genuine difference in those cases where medical interventions are required in as little time as possible. For example, children born with severe combined immunodeficiency usually die within the first few years of life from massive infections.

Howden cautioned, however, that she and her team must first derive a long-term source of blood cells from pluripotent stem cells before such treatments are viable and demonstrate the safety of such treatments as well.

See Stem Cell Reports, 2015: DOI: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2015.10.009.

Skin Cells Converted into Placenta-Generating Cells












Skin Cells Converted into Placenta-Generating Cells

Researchers from the laboratory of Yosef (Yossi) Buganim at Hebrew University of Jerusalem have used genetic engineering techniques to directly reprogram mouse skin cells into stable, and fully functional placenta-generating cells called induced trophoblast stem cells (iTSCs).

The placenta forms a vital link between a mother and her baby. When the placenta does not work as well as it should, the baby will receive less oxygen and nutrients from the mother. Consequently, the baby might show signs of fetal stress (that is the baby’s heart does not work properly), not grow nearly as well, and have a more difficult time during labor. Such a condition is called “placental insufficiency” and it can cause recurrent miscarriages, low birth weight, and birth defects.

Placental dysfunction has also been linked to a condition called fetal growth restriction (AKA Intrauterine growth restriction). Intrauterine growth restriction or IUGR is a condition characterized by poor growth of a baby while in the mother’s womb during pregnancy.

How can scientists study the placenta? Virtually all attempts to grow placental cells in culture have been largely unsuccessful.

Buganim and his colleagues have solved this problem. A screen for genes that support the development of the placenta yielded three genes: GATA3, Eomes, and Tfap2c. Next the Buganim team took mouse skin fibroblasts and forced the expression of these three placenta-specific genes in them. This initiated a cascade of events in the cells that converted them into stable and fully functional placenta-generating cells.

These skin-derived TSCs behave and look like native TSCs and they also function and contribute to developing placenta. The Bugamin laboratory used mouse cells for these experiments, but they want to expand their experiments to include human cells to make human iTSCs.

The success of this study could potentially give women who suffer from recurrent miscarriage and placental dysfunction diseases the ability to have healthy babies. The embryo is not at risk from such cells, since iTSCs integrate into the placenta and not into the embryos itself.

See Cell Stem Cell. 2015 Sep 22. pii: S1934-5909(15)00361-6. doi: 10.1016/j.stem.2015.08.006.

Rebooting Pancreatic Cells Can Normalize Blood Sugar Levels in Diabetic Mice

Type 1 diabetes results from the inability of the endocrine portion of the pancreas to secrete sufficient quantities of the hormone insulin. The cells that make insulin, beta cells, have been destroyed. Consequently, type 1 diabetics must inject themselves with insulin routinely in order to stay alive. Is there a better way?

A new strategy suggests that maybe pancreatic cells can be “rebooted” to produce insulin and that sure reprogramming could potentially help people with type 1 diabetes manage their blood sugar levels without the need for daily injections. This therapeutic approach is simpler and potentially safer than giving people stem cells that have been differentiated into pancreatic beta cells.

Philippe Lysy at the Cliniques Universitaires Saint Luc, which is part of the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, and his colleagues have reprogrammed pancreatic duct cells extracted from dead donors who were not diabetic at the time of death. The duct cells do not produce insulin, but they have a natural tendency to grow and differentiate into specific types of cells.

Lysy and his team grew the cells in the laboratory and encouraged them to become insulin-producing cells by exposing them to fatty particles. These fatty particles are absorbed into the cells after which they induce the synthesis of the MAFA transcription factor. MAFA acts as a genetic “switch” that binds to DNA and activates insulin production.

Implantation of these altered cells into diabetic mice showed that the cells were able to secrete insulin in a way that controls blood sugar levels. “The results are encouraging,” says Lysy.

Lysy’s colleague, Elisa Corritore, reported these results at this week’s annual meeting of the European Society for Pediatric Endocrinology in Barcelona, Spain. Lysy and others are preparing to submit their results for publication.

This work, if it continues to pan out, might lead to the harvesting of pancreatic ducts from deceased donors and converted in bulk into insulin-making cells. Such “off-the-shelf” cells could then be transplanted into people with type 1 diabetes to compensate for their inability to make their own insulin.

“We would hope to put the cells in a device under the skin that isolates them from the body’s immune system, so they’re not rejected as foreign,” says Lysy. He says devices like this are already being tested for their ability to house insulin-producing cells derived from stem cells.

Previous attempts to get round this problem have included embedding insulin-producing cells in a seaweed derivative prior to transplantation in order to keep them from being destroyed by the recipient’s immune system.

Lysy thinks that since insulin-producing cells originate from pancreatic tissue, they have an inherently lower risk of becoming cancerous after the transplant. This has always been a worry associated with tissues produced from embryonic stem cells, since these have the capability to form tumors if any are left in their original state in the transplanted tissue.

The basic premise of the work looks solid, says Juan Dominguez-Bendala, director of stem cell development for Translational Research at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Diabetes Research Institute in Florida. “However, until a peer-reviewed manuscript is published and all the details of the work become available to the scientific community, it is difficult to judge if this advance represents a meaningful leap in the state of the art.”

Lysy expects it will take between three and five years before the technique is ready to be tested in human clinical trials.

Rejuvenation Factor Discovered in Human Eggs

When the egg is fertilized by a sperm, it is transformed into a single-celled embryo or zygote that is metabolically active and driven to divide and develop. The egg, on the other hand, is a rather inert cell from a metabolic perspective. What is it in the egg that allows it to transform into something so remarkably different?

A new study by Swea-Ling Khaw and others in the laboratory of Ng Shyh-Chang at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) has elucidated two main factors that help rejuvenate the egg and might also help reprogram adult cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).

Eggs express large amounts of a protein called Tcl1. Tcl1 suppresses the function of old, potentially malfunctioning mitochondria (the structure in cells that makes the energy for the cell). This suppression prevents damaged mitochondria from adversely affecting the egg’s transformation from into an embryo.

Remember also that if an adult cell is fused to an egg, it can cause the egg to divide and form an early embryo. Therefore, the egg cytoplasm is able to reprogram adult cells as well, and Tcl1 seems to play a role in this reprogramming capability as well.

In a screen for genes that are important to the reprogramming process, Shyh-Chang’s laboratory isolated two genes, Tcl1 and Tcl1b1. Further investigation of these two proteins showed that Tcl1 affects mitochondria by inhibiting a mitochondrial protein called polynucleotide phosphorylase (PNP). By locking PNP in the cytoplasm rather than the mitochondria, the growth and function of the mitochondria are inhibited. Tcl1b1 activates the Akt kinase, which stimulate cell growth, survival, and metabolism.

In a review article in the journal Stem Cells and Development, Anaïs Wanet and others explain that energy production in pluripotent stem cells is largely by means of glycolysis, which occurs in the cytoplasm. Mitochondria in pluripotent stem cells are immature subfunctional. When adult cells are reprogrammed into iPSCs, mitochondria function is shut down and energy production is largely derived from glycolysis. When the cells differentiate, the mitochondria are remodeled and become functional once again. Tcl1 is the protein that help shut down the mitochondria so that the pluripotent state can ensue and Tcf1b1 gears up the pluripotent stem cells to grow and divide at will.

Given this remarkable finding, can Tcf1 help make better iPSCs? Almost certainly, but how does one use this important factor to make better iPSCs?  That awaits further experimentation.  Additionally, this finding might also help aging and infertility issues as well. Hopefully this work by Shyh-Chang and her colleagues will lead to many more fruitful and exciting experiments.

Chemical-Only Cell Reprogramming Cocktails Direct Converts Skin Cells into Neurons

Two Chinese laboratories have independently transformed skin cells into neurons using only a cocktail of chemicals. One laboratory used skins cells from Alzheimer’s patients and the other used healthy laboratory mice, and therefore, the protocols developed by each laboratory differ. However, the success of these protocols suggests that it might be economically possible to use neurons made a patient’s own cells to test drug regiments for clinical purposes.

These two studies reinforce the idea that a purely chemical approach represents a promising way to scale up cell reprogramming research that might avoid the technical challenges and safety concerns associated with the more popular method of using transcription factors.

One of the challenges of reprogramming cells to change their identity is that you may end up with cells that look normal on the outside, but inside, many of their internal workings are quite different from the cell type you want to make. In these two papers, neurons made from chemically reprogrammed cells showed neuron-specific gene expression, action potentials, and synapse formation, which is strong evidence that these protocols produce fully operational neurons.

In both cases, the protocols employed decreased the expression of skin-specific genes and increased the expression of neuron-specific genes. These chemicals promoted neuronal cell fates by coordinating multiple signaling pathways that worked together to commit the cells to a neuronal fate. This direct reprogramming procedure bypasses the so-called “proliferative intermediate stage” that put cells under stress and increases the mutation rates. Therefore direct conversion protocols are inherently safer than other reprogramming protocols.

The paper from the laboratory of Jian Zhao (Cell Stem Cell 2015;17(2):204) designed a purely chemical protocol to convert skin cells from human Alzheimer’s disease patients into neurons. Direct reprogramming protocols are available for converting human skin cells into neurons, but these protocols require that cells be transfected with genes that encode transcription factors. Such manipulation requires that cells be treated with viruses or subjected to potentially stressful transfection conditions. This purely chemical protocol is a potentially welcome alternative that would be both safer and easier. The chemicals used in these procedures are easy to synthesize, stable, and standardization of the procedures would also be much easier.

The paper that uses a purely chemical protocol to directly reprogram mouse skin cells comes from the laboratory of Hongkui Deng (Cell Stem Cell 2015;17(2):195) is the culmination of four years of work. The main hurdle was suppressing skin-specific gene expression. Then Dong identified a compound called I-BET151 that suppressed skin cell-specific gene expression. This allowed Deng and his colleagues to successfully reprogram mouse cells with a purely chemical protocol.

The next step for both of these laboratories is to show that, in principle, these chemically reprogrammed cells can be used for therapeutic purposes. Such a proof-of-principle experiment will put direct reprogramming on the map for regenerative medicine in a powerful way.

Converting Immune Cell into Another Type of Immune Cell

What does it take to directly convert an antibody-producing B cell into a scavenging macrophage? The answer: one gene, according to a report in the July 30th issue of Stem Cell Reports. This directly reprogramming is transformation is possible because a transcription factor called C/EBPa can short-circuit the cells so that they re-express genes reserved for embryonic development.

Over the past 65 years, research teams in laboratories all over the world have shown that many different types of specialized cell types can be forcibly reprogrammed into another, but how this occurs is only recently been realized. These “transdifferentiations,” as they’re called, include reprogramming a skin cell into a muscle cell, or a muscle cell into a brown fat cell with the addition of just one or two transcription factors that bind to a cell’s DNA and induce the expression of other genes.

“For a long time it was unclear whether forcing cell fate decisions by expressing transcription factors in the wrong cell type could teach us something about what happens normally during physiological differentiation,” said senior study author Thomas Graf, Ph.D., group leader at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Spain. “What we have now found is that the two processes are actually surprisingly similar.”

According to lead author of this study, Chris van Oevelen, Ph.D., B cell transdifferentiation occurs when C/EBPa binds to two regions of DNA that act as gene expression enhancers. One of these regions is typically active in immune cells, but the other is only activated when macrophage precursors are ready to differentiate. Thus, the synergism of these two enhancer pathways can cause the B cell to act like a macrophage precursor, which triggers B cell-to-macrophage transdifferentiation.

“This has taught us a great deal about how a transcription factor can activate a new gene expression program (in our case, that of macrophages) but has left us in the dark about the other part of the equation; namely, how the factor silences the B cell program, something that must happen if transdifferentiation is to work,” Dr. Graf said. “This is one of the questions we are focusing on now.”

Dr. Graf is interested in this pathway because of its potential therapeutic applications. As it turns out, C/EBPa-induced B cell-to-macrophage transdifferentiation can convert both human B cell lymphoma or leukemia cells into functional, non-cancerous macrophages. Graf believes that induced transdifferentiation could become therapeutically relevant if drug researchers can find a molecule that can replace C/EBPa. Additionally, understanding the mechanisms of this process would help labs worldwide who use transdifferentiation approach to generate cells for regenerative purposes.

Reprogramming Pluripotent Cells into Totipotent Cells

With the advent of the Nobel Prize-winning research of Shinya Yamanaka, scientists are presently able to reprogram mature, adult cells into pluripotent cells. These “induced pluripotent stem cells” or iPSCs are made by genetically engineering adult cells and culturing them in special conditions. These iPSCs can also be differentiated, potentially, into every cell type in the adult human body. Now Maria-Elena Torres-Padilla‘s research team is trying to push the limits of stem cell science even further.

Torres-Padilla and her coworker successfully made “totipotent” cells, which have the same characteristics as those of the earliest embryonic stages, from pluripotent stem cells. This work was the result of a fruitful collaboration between Juanma Vaquerizas from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine (Münster, Germany), and Maria-Elena Torres-Padilla and her colleagues at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology (IGBMC) at Illkirch, France. This work has been published in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

Soon after fertilization, the embryo begins it first rounds of cell division, which is known as the “early cleavage” stages. At this early stage of development, when the embryo is composed of only 1 or 2 cells, the “blastomeres” or cells of the embryo are “totipotent.” Totipotent means that these blastomeres can produce an entire embryo, or the placenta and umbilical cord that accompany it.

Early Cleavage Stages

After the 12-16-cell stage, the embryo undergoes a complex process called “compaction,” in which the cells become very tightly bound together and two populations of cells become apparent.

Post-Compaction Embryo
Post-Compaction Embryo

The cells on the inside, which give rise to the cells of the “inner cell mass” (ICM), and outside cells, which give rise to the “trophectoderm” that produce the placenta. Trophectoderm cells express a specific set of genes; Yap1, Tead4, Gata3, Cdx2, Eomes and Elf5. The ICM generates the embryo proper and the ICM cells express a cadre of genes specific to these cells; Oct4, FGF4, Sall4, Sox2 and Nanog. These ICM cells are no longer totipotent, but have become “pluripotent,” can differentiate into any tissue, but they cannot alone produce the placenta or a whole embryo. As development progresses, these pluripotent cells continue to specialize and form the various tissues of the body through the process of cellular differentiation.

While it is possible to make pluripotent cells from mature, adult cells, Torres-Padilla and her coworkers have studied the characteristics of totipotent cells of the embryo and discovered factors capable of inducing a totipotent-like state.

When they cultured pluripotent stem cells in culture, a small percentage of totipotent cells appear spontaneously. Such cells are called “2C-like cells,” after their resemblance to the 2-cell stage embryo. Torres-Padilla and her team compared these 2C-like cells to totipotent cells in early embryos in order to determine their common characteristics and the features that distinguish them from pluripotent cells. In particular, Torres-Padilla and her collaborators found that the chromosomes of totipotent cells were less condensed and that the amount of the protein complex CAF1 was diminished. CAF1 (Chromatin Assembly Factor 1) is a protein complex that helps assemble histone proteins onto DNA.


Histones act as tiny spools around which DNA is wound. Because DNA is negatively charged, and histones are positively charged, the two have a natural affinity for each other. CAF1 binds to histones and regulates the association of histones with DNA in order to ensure that the assembly of histones on DNA is and orderly process. Histones wind DNA into a tight structure called “chromatin.” CAF1, as it turns out, is responsible for maintaining the pluripotent state by ensuring that the DNA remains properly wound around histones.


As an extension of this hypothesis, Torres-Padilla and her crew were able to induce a totipotent state by inactivating the expression of the CAF1 complex. CAF1 inactivation caused the chromatin of pluripotent cells to reform into a less condensed state, and this less condensed state was conducive to totipotency.

These data provide new avenues for understanding the nature of pluripotency, and could increase the efficiency of reprogramming somatic cells to be used for applications in regenerative medicine,

New York Stem Cell Foundation Invents Robotic Platform for Making Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are made from mature adult cells through a combination of genetic engineering and cell culture techniques. Because they are made from cells isolated from specific patients, they are patient-specific cells that can be used for drug testing, model experimental systems, and potentially cells for regenerative therapies.


Unfortunately, iPSCs are made in different laboratories that use different reagents and different protocols and with workers with different skill levels. Consequently, laboratory-made iPSC lines show a very wide range of variation that are not due to genetic differences in the cells from which they were made. Additionally, the production of iPSCs is labor intensive and expensive and there is a deep need to standardize the whole process. What are stem-cell scientists to do?

New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) has announced the development of a robot-driven apparatus that automates and completely standardizes the production of iPSCs. This modular, robotic platform for iPSC reprogramming enables automated, high-throughput conversion of cells isolated from skin biopsies into iPSCs and differentiated cells derived from them with minimal manual intervention. In a paper in the journal Nature Methods, NYSCF scientists in collaboration with bioengineers demonstrates that automated reprogramming of mature cells with this robotic platform (that uses pooled selection of pluripotent cells) results in high-quality, stable iPSC lines. These lines show less line-to-line variation than either manually produced iPSC lines or iPSC lines produced through automation followed by single-colony subcloning.

“The capacity to test drugs on thousands of patients in a dish will change how we cure disease. We
will be more informed about how drug candidates will behave in patients before the clinical trial phase accelerating the discovery process. This technology will enable us to bring precision medicine
treatments and personalized pharmaceuticals to more patients,”noted Dr. Thomas Singer, Senior
Vice President, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Pharmaceuticals Division.
“This technology may help us predict how drug candidates behave in patients before the most complex and expensive phase of drug development: clinical trials. This insight could speed up new biomedical R&D and open the door to a larger number of high impact precision therapies,”said Freda Lewis-Hall, M.D., DFAPA, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President, Pfizer Inc.
“Our goal is to understand and treat diseases. This is not an artisanal pursuit. Researchers need to
look at genetically diverse populations at scale, which means creating large numbers of standardized, human pluripotent stem cells. The NYSCF Global Stem Cell Array’s massive parallel processing
capabilities make this research possible,” said NYSCF Research Institute CEO and Founder Susan
L. Solomon, an author of the paper.

This robotic platform can potentially enable the application of iPSCs to population-scale biomedical problems including the study of complex genetic diseases and the development of personalized clinical treatments.

Drug Treatment Enhances Regeneration in Adult Mice

Humans do not have the ability to regenerate lost limbs, but there are particular vertebrate animals that possess this remarkable ability. Amphibians, for example, can regenerate lost appendages and this ability has made these remarkable creatures the focus of a good deal of research in order to understand how to translate this regenerative ability into other mammals, such as ourselves.

Mammals, unfortunately, have no such regenerative ability and we also tend to form scars over injury sites as a result of wound repair. Fortunately, there are some experimental mammalian models that do display enhanced wound regeneration and these organisms permit the study of the underlying processes at play during regeneration. Many of the processes which mediate wound regeneration are controlled through regulatory mechanisms stimulated by a protein called the “hypoxia-inducible factor-1a” or HIF-1α transcription factor. The laboratory of Ellen Heber-Katz at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, PA, has worked hard to characterize the function and specific biological activity of HIF-1α in MRL (Murphy Roths Large) mice. MRL mice show spontaneous regenerative healing. In a new study, Heber-Katz and her colleagues confirmed the importance of HIF-1α in regeneration and extended their understanding of this protein by establishing that small molecule-mediated stabilization of HIF-1α protein in wounded animals promotes regenerative wound healing after injury in mouse strains that do not possess the ability to spontaneously regenerate.

HIF-1alpha activity

Initial studies wounding healing in mice that had been subjected to ear-hole punch injuries. Such injuries induced high HIF-1α levels only in MRL mice but not in control animals (C57BL/6 mice). Also, if small interfering RNAs were used to knock down the levels of HIF-1α in MRL mice, wound closure was delayed and inefficient. These data suggested that HIF-1α was essential for spontaneous healing, and implied that artificial induction of HIF-1α at injury sites in strains of mice that do not show spontaneous healing could induce regenerative healing.

Heber-Katz and her co-workers subjected Swiss Webster mice (a mouse strain that does not show spontaneous regeneration) to ear-punch injuries, but also treated their ear injuries with a hydrogel laced with a drug called 1,4-DPCA (1,4-dihydrophenonthrolin-4-one-3-carboxylic acid). 1,4-DPCA is an inhibitor of the prolyl hydroxylases (PHDs) enzymes that degrade HIF-1α. This did not work because the mice kept grooming their ears and wiping off the hydrogel. So, an undaunted Heber-Katz team implanted the hydrogel underneath the skin of the animals’ necks. They observed HIF-1α expression increase on day 1 and reached maximal expression on days 3 to 4 after injection. If they repeated injection of 1,4-DPCA every 5 days in the neck, the full wound closed on day 35, with no harmful long-term effects observed at 3 months post-injection.

How does HIF-1α enable regenerative wound healing in these mice? Interestingly, 1,4-DPCA treatment induced the expression of stem-cell marker genes such as Nanog and Sox2. These induced cellular de-differentiation in the cells and stimulated the very early and rapid re-casting of the cell layers over the wound that are so characteristic of regeneration, but not wound repair. Additionally, 1,4-DPCA treatment reduced tissue remodeling, inflammatory responses, and scar formation. It also stimulated promoted events associated with the latter stages of the regenerative processes; such as the growth of new cells and the growth and redifferentiation of those cells into things like cartilage, and hair.

These data suggest that induction of the transcription factor HIF-1α promotes tissue regeneration over scar formation in mammals. Thus this is a potential strategy to stimulate the regeneration of lost or damaged tissues. The non-toxic and specific nature of the HIF-1α inhibitor used in these experiments should lead to fruitful studies in appropriate human systems (cell culture) but although mouse models and maybe larger animal models as well will assess the ability of particular drugs to induce repair in other parts of the body and should prove equally as useful.

This new study was published in Science Translational Medicine.

McMaster Scientists Convert Blood into Neural Cells With One Gene








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Long-term Tumorgenicity of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

A paper from the Okano laboratory has shown that implantation of neural stem cells made from induced pluripotent stem cells can still form tumors ever after a long period of time.

This paper is an important contribution to the safety issues surrounding induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). As noted in previous posts, iPSCs are made from adult cells by means of genetic engineering and cell culture techniques. In short, by introducing four different genes into adult cells and then culturing them in a special culture medium, a fraction of these cells will de-differentiate into cells that resemble embryonic stem cells in many ways, but are not exactly like them.

The Okano laboratory made iPSCs using viruses that integrate into the genome of the host cell, which is not the safest option. However, because in the four-gene cocktail that is normally used to reprogram these cells (Oct-4, Klf-4, Sox2, and c-Myc), the c-Myc gene is often thought to be the main cause of tumor formation. Okano and his collaborators made their iPSCs without the c-Myc gene, but only used the three-gene cocktail of Oct-4, Klf-4, and Sox2. Such a cocktail is much less efficient that the four-gene cocktail, but it supposed to make iPSCs that are altogether safer.

These iPSCs were differentiated into neural stem cells that grew as tiny spheres of cells, and these “neurospheres” were transplanted into the spinal cords of mice that had suffered a spinal cord injury. The implanted cells differentiated into neurons and glial cells and restored some neural function to these mice. However, the mice were observed for a long period of time after the implantations to assess the long-term safety of these implanted cells.

After 105 days, the implanted mice began to show deterioration of their neural function and their spinal cords showed tumors. It is clear that the Oct-4 gene that was used in the reprogramming procedure was the reason for the tumor transformation.

Graphical Abstract 20141213

This experiment, once again, calls into question the safety of any method for iPSC generation that leaves the transfected genes in the reprogrammed cells. I reported in a previous post that skin cells made from iPSCs that had their transgenes left in them were good at causing tumors and not as good as forming skin cells, but iPSCs without their reprogramming transgenes were safer and more effective tools for regenerative medicine.  This experiment also shows that c-Myc is not the only concern with iPSCs.  Any of the transgenes used for reprogramming can cause problems, and they must be removed if iPSCs are going to produce safe, differentiated cells.  Finally, this experiment pretty much shows that the use of retrovirus tools to introduce genes into cells for the sake of reprogramming is a bad idea if those cells are going to be used for regenerative medicine.  Non-integrating tools are much safer and preferable in these cases.

The Okano paper appeared in Stem Cell Reports.

New Technology Reprograms Skin Fibroblasts

Fibroblasts are one of the main components of connective tissue, which is the main reason scientists typically exploit them for experiments. A collaborative team of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, Boston University, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology have invented a way to reprogram fibroblasts without going through a pluripotent stage.

The senior author of this study, Xiaowei Xu, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, said, “Through direct reprogramming, we do not have to go through the pluripotent stem cell stage, but directly convert fibroblasts to melanocytes . So these cells do not have tumorigenicity” (the ability to cause tumors).

Melanocytes are found in the skin and they are responsible for the pigment in our skin. They are in the uppermost layer of the skin, known as the epidermis, and produce melanin, a brown pigment that helps screen against the harmful effects of UV light.

Turning a fibroblast into a melanocytes might seem trivial for a stem cell scientist; just reprogram the fibroblast into an induced pluripotent stem cells and then differentiate it into a melanocytes. However, this procedure utilized direct reprogramming, in which the fibroblast was converted into a melanocytes without traversing through the pluripotent stage. The difficultly with direct reprogramming is finding the right cocktail of genes and/or growth factors that will accomplish the deed.

Xu and his colleagues began their search by examining the genes that are specific to melanocytes. They found 10 different transcription factors that are important for melanocytes development. Next they screened these ten genes for their ability to convert a fibroblast into a melanocytes. They found that of the ten melanocytes-specific genes, three of them, Sox10, MITF, and PAX3 could do the job effectively. They called this gene combination “SMP3.”

When Xu and others tested SMP3 on mouse embryonic fibroblasts, they quickly expressed melanocytes-specific genes. When Xu’s group used SMP3 on human fetal dermal cells, once again, the cells rapidly differentiated into melanocytes. Xu and his team referred to these cells as hi-Mel, which is short for human, induced melanocytes.

When hi-Mel were grown in culture they produced melanin a plenty. When they were implanted into the skin of pigmentless mice, once again they rose to the challenge and made a great deal of pigment. Thus hi-Mel express the same genes as melanocytes and they behave for all intents and purposes as melanocytes.

Xu and his colleagues think that their procedure might be able to treat human patients with a condition called vitiligo in which the skin has patches that are devoid of pigment.

Another potential use of this technology is a way to effectively study melanoma, one of the most dangerous skin cancers known to human medicine. My good friend and SAU colleague died over a year ago from melanoma and having better ways to treat this monster would have been marvelous for Charlie, and his family, who miss him dearly. By generating melanocytes from the fibroblasts of melanoma patients, they can “screen not only to find why these patients easily develop melanoma, but possibly use their cells to screen for small compounds that can prevent melanoma from happening.”.

Also, because so the body contains so many fibroblasts in the first place, this reprogramming technique is well-suited for other cell-based treatments.