技术资料

Geometric factors including the size,shape,density,and spacing of pluripotent stem cell colonies play a significant role in the maintenance of pluripotency and in cell fate determination. These factors are impossible to control using standard tissue culture methods. As such,there can be substantial batch-to-batch variability in cell line maintenance and differentiation yield. Here,we demonstrate a simple,robust technique for pluripotent stem cell expansion and cardiomyocyte differentiation by patterning cell colonies with a silicone stencil. We have observed that patterning human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) colonies improves the uniformity and repeatability of their size,density,and shape. Uniformity of colony geometry leads to improved homogeneity in the expression of pluripotency markers SSEA4 and Nanog as compared with conventional clump passaging. Patterned cell colonies are capable of undergoing directed differentiation into spontaneously beating cardiomyocyte clusters with improved yield and repeatability over unpatterned cultures seeded either as cell clumps or uniform single cell suspensions. Circular patterns result in a highly repeatable 3D ring-shaped band of cardiomyocytes which electrically couple and lead to propagating contraction waves around the ring. Because of these advantages,geometrically patterning stem cells using stencils may offer greater repeatability from batch-to-batch and person-to-person,an increase in differentiation yield,a faster experimental workflow,and a simpler protocol to communicate and follow. Furthermore,the ability to control where cardiomyocytes arise across a culture well during differentiation could greatly aid the design of electrophysiological assays for drug-screening. View Publication

There is need in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries for high-throughput human cell-based assays for identifying hazardous chemicals,thereby reducing the overall reliance on animal studies for predicting the risk of toxic responses in humans. Despite instances of human-specific teratogens such as thalidomide,the use of human cell-teratogenicity assays has just started to be explored. Herein,a human pluripotent stem cell test (hPST) for identifying teratogens is described,benchmarking the in vitro findings to traditional preclinical toxicology teratogenicity studies and when available to teratogenic outcomes in humans. The hPST method employs a 3-day monolayer directed differentiation of human embryonic stem cells. The teratogenic risk of a compound is gauged by measuring the reduction in nuclear translocation of the transcription factor SOX17 in mesendodermal cells. Decreased nuclear SOX17 in the hPST model was strongly correlated with in vivo teratogenicity. Specifically,71 drug-like compounds with known in vivo effects,including thalidomide,were examined in the hPST. A threshold of 5μM demonstrated 94% accuracy (97% sensitivity and 92% specificity). Furthermore,15 environmental toxicants with physicochemical properties distinct from small molecule pharmaceutical agents were examined and a similarly strong concordance with teratogenicity outcomes from in vivo studies was observed. Finally,to assess the suitability of the hPST for high-throughput screens,a small library of 300 kinase inhibitors was tested,demonstrating the hPST platform's utility for interrogating teratogenic mechanisms and drug safety prediction. Thus,the hPST assay is a robust predictor of teratogenicity and appears to be an improvement over existing in vitro models. View Publication

Elotuzumab is a monoclonal antibody in development for multiple myeloma (MM) that targets CS1,a cell surface glycoprotein expressed on MM cells. In preclinical models,elotuzumab exerts anti-MM efficacy via natural killer (NK)-cell-mediated antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC). CS1 is also expressed at lower levels on NK cells where it acts as an activating receptor. We hypothesized that elotuzumab may have additional mechanisms of action via ligation of CS1 on NK cells that complement ADCC activity. Herein,we show that elotuzumab appears to induce activation of NK cells by binding to NK cell CS1 which promotes cytotoxicity against CS1(+) MM cells but not against autologous CS1(+) NK cells. Elotuzumab may also promote CS1-CS1 interactions between NK cells and CS1(+) target cells to enhance cytotoxicity in a manner independent of ADCC. NK cell activation appears dependent on differential expression of the signaling intermediary EAT-2 which is present in NK cells but absent in primary,human MM cells. Taken together,these data suggest elotuzumab may enhance NK cell function directly and confer anti-MM efficacy by means beyond ADCC alone. View Publication

Development of resistance to therapy continues to be a serious clinical problem in breast cancer management. Cancer stem/progenitor cells have been shown to play roles in resistance to chemo�? and radiotherapy. Here,we examined their role in the development of resistance to the oestrogen receptor antagonist tamoxifen. Tamoxifen�?resistant cells were enriched for stem/progenitors and expressed high levels of the stem cell marker Sox2. Silencing of the SOX2 gene reduced the size of the stem/progenitor cell population and restored sensitivity to tamoxifen. Conversely,ectopic expression of Sox2 reduced tamoxifen sensitivity in vitro and in vivo. Gene expression profiling revealed activation of the Wnt signalling pathway in Sox2�?expressing cells,and inhibition of Wnt signalling sensitized resistant cells to tamoxifen. Examination of patient tumours indicated that Sox2 levels are higher in patients after endocrine therapy failure,and also in the primary tumours of these patients,compared to those of responders. Together,these results suggest that development of tamoxifen resistance is driven by Sox2�?dependent activation of Wnt signalling in cancer stem/progenitor cells. View Publication

Cellular plasticity contributes to the regenerative capacity of plants,invertebrates,teleost fishes and amphibians. In vertebrates,differentiated cells are known to revert into replicating progenitors,but these cells do not persist as stable stem cells. Here we present evidence that differentiated airway epithelial cells can revert into stable and functional stem cells in vivo. After the ablation of airway stem cells,we observed a surprising increase in the proliferation of committed secretory cells. Subsequent lineage tracing demonstrated that the luminal secretory cells had dedifferentiated into basal stem cells. Dedifferentiated cells were morphologically indistinguishable from stem cells and they functioned as well as their endogenous counterparts in repairing epithelial injury. Single secretory cells clonally dedifferentiated into multipotent stem cells when they were cultured ex vivo without basal stem cells. By contrast,direct contact with a single basal stem cell was sufficient to prevent secretory cell dedifferentiation. In analogy to classical descriptions of amphibian nuclear reprogramming,the propensity of committed cells to dedifferentiate is inversely correlated to their state of maturity. This capacity of committed cells to dedifferentiate into stem cells may have a more general role in the regeneration of many tissues and in multiple disease states,notably cancer. View Publication

Experiments were conducted to isolate and characterize the gene and gene product of a human hematopoietic colony-stimulating factor with pluripotent biological activities. This factor has the ability to induce differentiation of a murine myelomonocytic leukemia cell line WEHI-3B(D+) and cells from patients with newly diagnosed acute nonlymphocytic leukemia (ANLL). A complementary DNA copy of the gene encoding a pluripotent human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (hG-CSF) was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli. The recombinant form of hG-CSF is capable of supporting neutrophil proliferation in a CFU-GM assay. In addition,recombinant hG-CSF can support early erythroid colonies and mixed colony formation. Competitive binding studies done with 125I-labeled hG-CSF and cell samples from two patients with newly diagnosed human leukemias as well as WEHI-3B(D+) cells showed that one of the human leukemias (ANLL,classified as M4) and the WEHI-3B(D+) cells have receptors for hG-CSF. Furthermore,the murine WEHI-3B(D+) cells and human leukemic cells classified as M2,M3,and M4 were induced by recombinant hG-CSF to undergo terminal differentiation to macrophages and granulocytes. The secreted form of the protein produced by the bladder carcinoma cell line 5637 was found to be O-glycosylated and to have a molecular weight of 19,600. View Publication

PURPOSE Operable thoracic esophageal/gastroesophageal junction carcinoma (EC) is often treated with chemoradiation and surgery but tumor responses are unpredictable and heterogeneous. We hypothesized that aldehyde dehydrogenase-1 (ALDH-1) could be associated with response. METHODS The labeling indices (LIs) of ALDH-1 by immunohistochemistry in untreated tumor specimens were established in EC patients who had chemoradiation and surgery. Univariate logistic regression and 3-fold cross validation were carried out for the training (67% of patients) and validation (33%) sets. Non-clinical experiments in EC cells were performed to generate complimentary data. RESULTS Of 167 EC patients analyzed,40 (24%) had a pathologic complete response (pathCR) and 27 (16%) had an extremely resistant (exCRTR) cancer. The median ALDH-1 LI was 0.2 (range,0.01-0.85). There was a significant association between pathCR and low ALDH-1 LI (p ≤ 0.001; odds-ratio [OR] = 0.432). The 3-fold cross validation led to a concordance index (C-index) of 0.798 for the fitted model. There was a significant association between exCRTR and high ALDH-1 LI (p ≤ 0.001; OR = 3.782). The 3-fold cross validation led to the C-index of 0.960 for the fitted model. In several cell lines,higher ALDH-1 LIs correlated with resistant/aggressive phenotype. Cells with induced chemotherapy resistance upregulated ALDH-1 and resistance conferring genes (SOX9 and YAP1). Sorted ALDH-1+ cells were more resistant and had an aggressive phenotype in tumor spheres than ALDH-1- cells. CONCLUSIONS Our clinical and non-clinical data demonstrate that ALDH-1 LIs are predictive of response to therapy and further research could lead to individualized therapeutic strategies and novel therapeutic targets for EC patients. View Publication

Human amniotic membrane is a standard substratum used to culture limbal epithelial stem cells for transplantation to patients with limbal stem cell deficiency. Various methods were developed to decellularize amniotic membrane,because denuded membrane is poorly immunogenic and better supports repopulation by dissociated limbal epithelial cells. Amniotic membrane denuding usually involves treatment with EDTA and/or proteolytic enzymes; in many cases additional mechanical scraping is required. Although ensuring limbal cell proliferation,these methods are not standardized,require relatively long treatment times and can result in membrane damage. We propose to use 0.5 M NaOH to reliably remove amniotic cells from the membrane. This method was used before to lyse cells for DNA isolation and radioactivity counting. Gently rubbing a cotton swab soaked in NaOH over the epithelial side of amniotic membrane leads to nearly complete and easy removal of adherent cells in less than a minute. The denuded membrane is subsequently washed in a neutral buffer. Cell removal was more thorough and uniform than with EDTA,or EDTA plus mechanical scraping with an electric toothbrush,or n-heptanol plus EDTA treatment. NaOH-denuded amniotic membrane did not show any perforations compared with mechanical or thermolysin denuding,and showed excellent preservation of immunoreactivity for major basement membrane components including laminin α2,γ1-γ3 chains,α1/α2 and α6 type IV collagen chains,fibronectin,nidogen-2,and perlecan. Sodium hydroxide treatment was efficient with fresh or cryopreserved (10% dimethyl sulfoxide or 50% glycerol) amniotic membrane. The latter method is a common way of membrane storage for subsequent grafting in the European Union. NaOH-denuded amniotic membrane supported growth of human limbal epithelial cells,immortalized corneal epithelial cells,and induced pluripotent stem cells. This simple,fast and reliable method can be used to standardize decellularized amniotic membrane preparations for expansion of limbal stem cells in vitro before transplantation to patients. View Publication

Increasing evidence supports the importance of cell extrinsic regulation in stem cell fate control. Hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) are responsive to local signals from their niche and to systemic feedback from progenitors and mature cells. The Notch ligand Delta-1 (DL1),a key component of the stem cell niche,regulates human hematopoietic lineage development in a dose-dependent manner and has been used clinically for primitive progenitor expansion. How DL1 acts to regulate HSC fate and whether these actions are related to its lineage skewing effects are poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that,although DL1 activates signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 signaling similarly to the gp130-activating cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6),it has opposite effects on myeloid cell production. Mechanistically,these different outcomes are attributable to a DL1-mediated reduction in membrane (m)-bound IL-6 receptor (R) expression,converting progenitor cells from being directly IL-6 responsive to requiring both IL-6 and soluble (s) IL-6R for activation. Concomitant reduction of both mIL-6R (by DL1 supplementation) and sIL-6R (using dynamically fed cultures) reduced myeloid cell production and led to enhanced outputs of human HSCs. This work describes a new mode of cytokine action in which DL1 changes cytokine receptor distributions on hematopoietic cells,altering feedback networks and their impact on stem cell fate. View Publication

Circulating levels of leptin are elevated in type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and leptin plays a role in immune responses. Elevated circulating IL-18 levels are associated with clinical complications of T2DM. IL-18 regulates cytokine secretion and the function of a number of immune cells including T-cells,neutrophils and macrophages and as such has a key role in immunity and inflammation. Pro-inflammatory monocytes exhibiting elevated cytokine secretion are closely associated with inflammation in T2DM,however,little is known about the role of leptin in modifying monocyte IL-18 secretion. We therefore aimed to investigate the effect of leptin on IL-18 secretion by monocytes. We report herein that leptin increases IL-18 secretion in THP-1 and primary human monocytes but has no effect on IL-18mRNA. Leptin and LPS signalling in monocytes occurs by overlapping but distinct pathways. Thus,in contrast to a strong stimulation by LPS,leptin has no effect on IL-1βmRNA levels or IL-1β secretion. In addition,LPS stimulates the secretion of IL-6 but leptin did not whereas both treatments up regulate IL-8 secretion from the same cells. Although leptin (and LPS) has a synergistic effect with exogenous ATP on IL-18 secretion in both THP-1 and primary monocytes,experiments involving ATP assays and pharmacological inhibition of ATP signalling failed to provide any evidence that endogenous ATP secreted by leptin-stimulated monocytes was responsible for enhancement of monocyte IL-18 secretion by leptin. Analysis of the action of caspase-1 revealed that leptin up regulates caspase-1 activity and the effect of leptin on IL-18 release is prevented by caspase-1 inhibitor (Ac-YVAD-cmk). These data suggest that leptin activates IL-18 processing rather than IL-18 transcription. In conclusion,leptin enhances IL-18 secretion via modulation of the caspase-1 inflammasome function and acts synergistically with ATP in this regard. This process may contribute to aberrant immune responses in T2DM and other conditions of hyperleptinemia. View Publication

Although transcriptional and posttranscriptional events are detected in RNA-Seq data from second-generation sequencing,full-length mRNA isoforms are not captured. On the other hand,third-generation sequencing,which yields much longer reads,has current limitations of lower raw accuracy and throughput. Here,we combine second-generation sequencing and third-generation sequencing with a custom-designed method for isoform identification and quantification to generate a high-confidence isoform dataset for human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). We report 8,084 RefSeq-annotated isoforms detected as full-length and an additional 5,459 isoforms predicted through statistical inference. Over one-third of these are novel isoforms,including 273 RNAs from gene loci that have not previously been identified. Further characterization of the novel loci indicates that a subset is expressed in pluripotent cells but not in diverse fetal and adult tissues; moreover,their reduced expression perturbs the network of pluripotency-associated genes. Results suggest that gene identification,even in well-characterized human cell lines and tissues,is likely far from complete. View Publication

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are derived from the inner cell mass of the blastocyst. Despite sharing the common property of pluripotency,hESCs are notably distinct from epiblast cells of the preimplantation blastocyst. Here we use a combination of three small-molecule inhibitors to sustain hESCs in a LIF signaling-dependent hESC state (3iL hESCs) with elevated expression of NANOG and epiblast-enriched genes such as KLF4,DPPA3,and TBX3. Genome-wide transcriptome analysis confirms that the expression signature of 3iL hESCs shares similarities with native preimplantation epiblast cells. We also show that 3iL hESCs have a distinct epigenetic landscape,characterized by derepression of preimplantation epiblast genes. Using genome-wide binding profiles of NANOG and OCT4,we identify enhancers that contribute to rewiring of the regulatory circuitry. In summary,our study identifies a distinct hESC state with defined regulatory circuitry that will facilitate future analysis of human preimplantation embryogenesis and pluripotency. View Publication