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Preclinical in vitro models provide an essential tool to study cancer cell biology as well as aid in translational research,including drug target identification and drug discovery efforts. For any model to be clinically relevant,it needs to recapitulate the biology and cell heterogeneity of the primary tumor. We recently developed and described a conditional reprogramming (CR) cell technology that addresses many of these needs and avoids the deficiencies of most current cancer cell lines,which are usually clonal in origin. Here,we used the CR cell method to generate a collection of patient-derived cell cultures from non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC). Whole exome sequencing and copy number variations are used for the first time to address the capability of CR cells to keep their tumor-derived heterogeneity. Our results indicated that these primary cultures largely maintained the molecular characteristics of the original tumors. Using a mutant-allele tumor heterogeneity (MATH) score,we showed that CR cells are able to keep and maintain most of the intra-tumoral heterogeneity,suggesting oligoclonality of these cultures. CR cultures therefore represent a pre-clinical lung cancer model for future basic and translational studies. View Publication

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and aggressive malignant tumor in adult brain. Even with the current standard therapy including surgical resection followed by postoperative radiotherapy and chemotherapy with temozolomide (Temo),GBM patients still have a poor median survival. Reprogramming of tumor cells into non-malignant cells might be a promising therapeutic strategy for malignant tumors,including GBM. Based on previous studies using small molecules to reprogram astrocytes into neuronal cells,here we further identified a FTT cocktail of three commonly used drugs (Fasudil,Tranilast,and Temo) to reprogram patient-derived GBM cells,either cultured in serum containing or serum-free medium,into neuronal like cells. FTT-treated GBM cells displayed a neuronal like morphology,expressed neuronal genes,exhibited neuronal electrophysiological properties,and showed attenuated malignancy. More importantly,FTT cocktail more significantly suppressed tumor growth and prolonged survival in GBM patient derived xenograft than Temo alone. Our study provided preclinical evidence that the neuronal reprogramming drug cocktail might be a promising strategy to improve the existing treatment for GBM. View Publication

Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) provide an attractive tool to study disease mechanisms of neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia. A pertinent problem is the development of hiPSC-based assays to discriminate schizophrenia (SZ) from autism spectrum disorder (ASD) models. Healthy control individuals as well as patients with SZ and ASD were examined by a panel of diagnostic tests. Subsequently,skin biopsies were taken for the generation,differentiation,and testing of hiPSC-derived neurons from all individuals. SZ and ASD neurons share a reduced capacity for cortical differentiation as shown by quantitative analysis of the synaptic marker PSD95 and neurite outgrowth. By contrast,pattern analysis of calcium signals turned out to discriminate among healthy control,schizophrenia,and autism samples. Schizophrenia neurons displayed decreased peak frequency accompanied by increased peak areas,while autism neurons showed a slight decrease in peak amplitudes. For further analysis of the schizophrenia phenotype,transcriptome analyses revealed a clear discrimination among schizophrenia,autism,and healthy controls based on differentially expressed genes. However,considerable differences were still evident among schizophrenia patients under inspection. For one individual with schizophrenia,expression analysis revealed deregulation of genes associated with the major histocompatibility complex class II (MHC class II) presentation pathway. Interestingly,antipsychotic treatment of healthy control neurons also increased MHC class II expression. In conclusion,transcriptome analysis combined with pattern analysis of calcium signals appeared as a tool to discriminate between SZ and ASD phenotypes in vitro. View Publication

Thymosin $\beta$4 (T$\beta$4) is a G-actin sequestering protein that contributes to diverse cellular activities,such as migration and angiogenesis. In this study,the beneficial effects of combined cell therapy with T$\beta$4 and human adipose-derived stem cells (hASCs) in a mouse ischemic hindlimb model were investigated. We observed that exogenous treatment with T$\beta$4 enhanced endogenous TMSB4X mRNA expression and promoted morphological changes (increased cell length) in hASCs. Interestingly,T$\beta$4 induced the active state of hASCs by up-regulating intracellular signaling pathways including the PI3K/AKT/mTOR and MAPK/ERK pathways. Treatment with T$\beta$4 significantly increased cell migration and sprouting from microbeads. Moreover,additional treatment with T$\beta$4 promoted the endothelial differentiation potential of hASCs by up-regulating various angiogenic genes. To evaluate the in vivo effects of the T$\beta$4-hASCs combination on vessel recruitment,dorsal window chambers were transplanted,and the co-treated mice were found to have a significantly increased number of microvessel branches. Transplantation of hASCs in combination with T$\beta$4 was found to improve blood flow and attenuate limb or foot loss post-ischemia compared to transplantation with hASCs alone. Taken together,the therapeutic application of hASCs combined with T$\beta$4 could be effective in enhancing endothelial differentiation and vascularization for treating hindlimb ischemia. View Publication

Supercentenarians (≥110-year-old,SC) are a uniquely informative population not only because they surpass centenarians in age,but because they appear to age more slowly with fewer incidences of chronic age-related disease than centenarians. We reprogramed donor B-lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCL) derived from a 114-year-old (SC),a 43-year-old healthy disease-free control (HDC) and an 8-year-old with a rapid aging disease (Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS)) and compared SC-iPSC to HDC-iPSC and HGPS-iPSCs. Reprogramming to pluripotency was confirmed by pluripotency marker expression and differentiation to 3 germ-layers. Each iPSC clone differentiated efficiently to mesenchymal progenitor cells (MPC) as determined by surface marker expression and RNAseq analysis. We identified supercentenarian and HGPS associated gene expression patterns in the differentiated MPC lines that were not evident in the parental iPSC lines. Importantly,telomere length resetting occurred in iPSC from all donors albeit at a lower incidence in supercentenarian iPSCs. These data indicate the potential to use reprogramming to reset both developmental state and cellular age in the oldest of the old." We anticipate that supercentenarian iPSC and their differentiated derivatives will be valuable tools for studying the underlying mechanisms of extreme longevity and disease resistance." View Publication

Glioblastoma is the most aggressive and deadly brain cancer. There is growing interest to develop drugs that specifically target to glioblastoma tumor-initiating cells (TICs). However,the cost-effective production of large numbers of high quality glioblastoma TICs for drug discovery with current cell culturing technologies remains very challenging. Here,we report a new method that cultures glioblastoma TICs in microscale alginate hydrogel tubes (or AlgTubes). The AlgTubes allowed long-term culturing ({\~{}}50 days,10 passages) of glioblastoma TICs with high growth rate ({\~{}}700-fold expansion/14 days),high cell viability and high volumetric yield ({\~{}}3.0 × 108 cells/mL) without losing the stem cell properties,all offered large advancements over current culturing methods. This method can be applied for the scalable production of glioblastoma TICs at affordable cost for drug discovery. View Publication

Both antitumor and protumor property of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been demonstrated. We hypothesize that this contradiction is due to the heterogeneity of MSC subsets and that extracellular vesicles (EVs) from distinct MSC subsets can transfer the corresponding antitumor activities. Here we evaluated the antitumor activities of two subsets of adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (ADSCs) and ADSC-derived EVs (ADSC-EVs) in immunocompetent syngeneic mouse models of breast cancer. We identified CD90high and CD90low ADSC subsets and demonstrated that CD90high ADSCs could be converted into CD90low ADSCs by stimulation with LPS. CD90low ADSCs and its derived EVs significantly inhibited tumor growth in tumor-bearing mice. Benefit of tumor control were associated with decreased tumor cell proliferation and migration,and enhanced tumor cell apoptosis mediated by ADSC-EVs. Antioncogenic miRNA-16-5p loaded CD90low ADSC-EVs further significantly enhanced antitumor activities. Taken together,this study represents the first attempt to apply our newly identified antitumor ADSCs and its derived EVs in preclinical treatment of breast cancer. This study also provides the evidence that EVs can serve as a novel and effective therapeutics or drug delivery vesicle. This new therapeutic approach could be potentially applicable to breast cancer and many other types of cancer. View Publication

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic affecting the human respiratory system severely challenges public health and urgently demands for increasing our understanding of COVID-19 pathogenesis,especially host factors facilitating virus infection and replication. SARS-CoV-2 was reported to enter cells via binding to ACE2,followed by its priming by TMPRSS2. Here,we investigate ACE2 and TMPRSS2 expression levels and their distribution across cell types in lung tissue (twelve donors,39,778 cells) and in cells derived from subsegmental bronchial branches (four donors,17,521 cells) by single nuclei and single cell RNA sequencing,respectively. While TMPRSS2 is strongly expressed in both tissues,in the subsegmental bronchial branches ACE2 is predominantly expressed in a transient secretory cell type. Interestingly,these transiently differentiating cells show an enrichment for pathways related to RHO GTPase function and viral processes suggesting increased vulnerability for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Our data provide a rich resource for future investigations of COVID-19 infection and pathogenesis. View Publication

Oncolytic virus therapy leads to immunogenic death of virus-infected tumor cells and this has been shown in preclinical models to enhance the cytotoxic T-lymphocyte response against tumor-associated antigens (TAAs),leading to killing of uninfected tumor cells. To investigate whether oncolytic virotherapy can increase immune responses to tumor antigens in human subjects,we studied T-cell responses against a panel of known myeloma TAAs using PBMC samples obtained from ten myeloma patients before and after systemic administration of an oncolytic measles virus encoding sodium iodide symporter (MV-NIS). Despite their prior exposures to multiple immunosuppressive antimyeloma treatment regimens,T-cell responses to some of the TAAs were detectable even before measles virotherapy. Measurable baseline T-cell responses against MAGE-C1 and hTERT were present. Furthermore,MV-NIS treatment significantly (P {\textless} 0.05) increased T-cell responses against MAGE-C1 and MAGE-A3. Interestingly,one patient who achieved complete remission after MV-NIS therapy had strong baseline T-cell responses both to measles virus proteins and to eight of the ten tested TAAs. Our data demonstrate that oncolytic virotherapy can function as an antigen agnostic vaccine,increasing cytotoxic T-lymphocyte responses against TAAs in patients with multiple myeloma,providing a basis for continued exploration of this modality in combination with immune checkpoint blockade. View Publication

The enteric pathogen Lawsonia intracellularis is one of the main causes of diarrhea and compromised weight gain in pigs worldwide. Traditional cell-line cultures have been used to study L. intracellularis pathogenesis. However,these systems fail to reproduce the epithelial changes observed in the intestines of L. intracellularis-infected pigs,specifically,the changes in intestinal cell constitution and gene expression. A more physiologically accurate and state-of-the-art model is provided by swine enteroids derived from stem cell-containing crypts from healthy pigs. The objective of this study was to verify the feasibility of two-dimensional swine enteroids as in vitro models for L. intracellularis infection. We established both three- and two-dimensional swine enteroid cultures derived from intestinal crypts. The two-dimensional swine enteroids were infected by L. intracellularis in four independent experiments. Enteroid-infected samples were collected 3 and 7 d postinfection for analysis using real-time quantitative PCR and L. intracellularis immunohistochemistry. In this study,we show that L. intracellularis is capable of infecting and replicating intracellularly in two-dimensional swine enteroids derived from ileum. View Publication

Short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) butyrate and propionate are metabolites from dietary fiber's fermentation by gut microbiota that can affect differentiation or functions of T cells,macrophages and dendritic cells. We show here that at low doses these SCFAs directly impact B cell intrinsic functions to moderately enhance class-switch DNA recombination (CSR),while decreasing at higher doses over a broad physiological range,AID and Blimp1 expression,CSR,somatic hypermutation and plasma cell differentiation. In human and mouse B cells,butyrate and propionate decrease B cell Aicda and Prdm1 by upregulating select miRNAs that target Aicda and Prdm1 mRNA-3'UTRs through inhibition of histone deacetylation (HDAC) of those miRNA host genes. By acting as HDAC inhibitors,not as energy substrates or through GPR-engagement signaling in these B cell-intrinsic processes,these SCFAs impair intestinal and systemic T-dependent and T-independent antibody responses. Their epigenetic impact on B cells extends to inhibition of autoantibody production and autoimmunity in mouse lupus models. View Publication

Rabies is a zoonotic neurological infection caused by lyssavirus that continues to result in devastating loss of human life. Many aspects of rabies pathogenesis in human neurons are not well understood. Lack of appropriate ex-vivo models for studying rabies infection in human neurons has contributed to this knowledge gap. In this study,we utilize advances in stem cell technology to characterize rabies infection in human stem cell-derived neurons. We show key cellular features of rabies infection in our human neural cultures,including upregulation of inflammatory chemokines,lack of neuronal apoptosis,and axonal transmission of viruses in neuronal networks. In addition,we highlight specific differences in cellular pathogenesis between laboratory-adapted and field strain lyssavirus. This study therefore defines the first stem cell-derived ex-vivo model system to study rabies pathogenesis in human neurons. This new model system demonstrates the potential for enabling an increased understanding of molecular mechanisms in human rabies,which could lead to improved control methods. View Publication