Improved Generation of Patient-Specific Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Using a Chemically-Defined and Matrigel-Based Approach

Title:Improved Generation of Patient-Specific Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Using a Chemically-Defined and Matrigel-Based Approach

Volume: 13 Issue: 5

Author(s): B. Groß, M. Sgodda, M. Rasche, A. Schambach, G. Gohring, B. Schlegelberger, B. Greber, T. Linden, D. Reinhardt, T. Cantz and J.-H. Klusmann

Affiliation:

Keywords: Familial platelet disorders, induced pluripotent stem cells, Runx1, small molecules.

Abstract: Reprogramming of somatic cells into patient-specific pluripotent analogues of human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) emerges as a prospective therapeutic angle in molecular medicine and a tool for basic stem cell biology. However, the combination of relative inefficiency and high variability of non-defined culture conditions precluded the use of this technique in a clinical setting and impeded comparability between laboratories. To overcome these obstacles, we sequentially devised a reprogramming protocol using one lentiviral-based polycistronic reprogramming construct, optimized for high co-expression of OCT4, SOX2, KLF4 and MYC in conjunction with small molecule inhibitors of non-permissive signaling cascades, such as transforming growth factor β (SB431542), MEK/ERK (PD0325901) and Rho-kinase signaling (Thiazovivin), in a defined extracellular environment. Based on human fetal liver fibroblasts we could efficiently derive induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) within 14 days. We attained efficiencies of up to 10.97±1.71% resulting in 79.5- fold increase compared to non-defined reprogramming using four singular vectors. We show that the overall increase of efficiency and temporal kinetics is a combinatorial effect of improved lentiviral vector design, signaling inhibition and definition of extracellular matrix (Matrigel®) and culture medium (mTESR®1). Using this protocol, we could derive iPSCs from patient fibroblasts, which were impermissive to classical reprogramming efforts, and from a patient suffering from familial platelet disorder. Thus, our defined protocol for highly efficient reprogramming to generate patient-specific iPSCs, reflects a big step towards therapeutic and broad scientific application of iPSCs, even in previously unfeasible settings.

Cite this article as:

Groß B., Sgodda M., Rasche M., Schambach A., Gohring G., Schlegelberger B., Greber B., Linden T., Reinhardt D., Cantz T. and Klusmann J.-H., Improved Generation of Patient-Specific Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Using a Chemically-Defined and Matrigel-Based Approach, Current Molecular Medicine 2013; 13 (5) . https://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1566524011313050008