New human Mini-brain model of devastating childhood disease.
The eradication of Aicardi-Goutieres Syndrome (AGS) can’t come soon enough. This rare but terrible inherited disease causes the immune system to attack the brain. The condition leads to microcephaly (an abnormal small head and brain size), muscle spasms, vision problems and joint stiffness during infancy. Death or a persistent comatose state is common by early childhood. There is no cure.
Though animal models that mimic AGS symptoms are helpful, they don’t reflect the human disease closely enough to provide researchers with a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of the disease. But CIRM-funded research published this week may be a game changer for opening up new therapeutic strategies for the children and their families that are suffering from AGS.
Organoid mini-brains are clusters of cultured cells self-organized into miniature replicas of organs. Image courtesy of Cleber A. Trujillo, UC San Diego.
To get a clearer human picture of the disease, Dr. Alysson Muotri of UC San Diego and his team generated AGS patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These iPSCs were then grown into “mini-brains” in a lab dish. As described in Cell Stem Cell, their examination of the mini-brains revealed an excess of chromosomal DNA in the cells. This abnormal build up causes various toxic effects on the nerve cells in the mini-brains which, according to Muotri, had the hallmarks of AGS in patients:
“These models seemed to mirror the development and progression of AGS in a developing fetus,” said Muotri in a press release. “It was cell death and reduction when neural development should be rising.”
In turns out that the excess DNA wasn’t just a bunch of random sequences but instead most came from so-called LINE1 (L1) retroelements. These repetitive DNA sequences can “jump” in and out of DNA chromosomes and are thought to be remnants of ancient viruses in the human genome. And it turns out the cell death in the mini-brains was caused by the immune system’s anti-viral response to these L1 retroelements. First author Charles Thomas explained why researchers may have missed this in their mouse models:
“We uncovered a novel and fundamental mechanism, where chronic response to L1 elements can negatively impact human neurodevelopment. This mechanism seems human-specific. We don’t see this in the mouse.”
The team went on to test the anti-retroviral effects of HIV drugs on their AGS models. Sure enough, the drugs decreased the amount of L1 DNA and cell growth rebounded in the mini-brains. The beauty of using already approved drugs is that the route to clinical trials is much faster and in fact a European trial is currently underway.
For more details, watch this video interview with Dr. Muotri:
New findings about immune cell development may open door to new cancer treatments
For those of you who suffer with seasonal allergies, you can blame your sniffling and sneezing on an overreaction by mast cells. These white blood cells help jump start the immune system by releasing histamines which makes blood vessels leaky allowing other immune cells to join the battle to fight disease or infection. Certain harmless allergens like pollen are mistaken as dangerous and can also cause histamine release which triggers tearing and sneezing.
Mast cells in lab dish. Image: Wikipedia.
Dysfunction of mast cells are also involved in some blood cancers. And up until now, it was thought a protein called stem cell factor played the key role in the development of blood stem cells into mast cells. But research reported this week by researchers at Karolinska Institute and Uppsala University found cracks in that previous hypothesis. Their findings published in Blood could open the door to new cancer therapies.
The researchers examine the effects of the anticancer drug Glivec – which blocks the function of stem cell factor – on mast cells in patients with a form of leukemia. Although the number of mature mast cells were reduced by the drug, the number of progenitor mast cells were not. The progenitors are akin to teenagers in that they’re at an intermediate stage of development, more specialized than stem cells but not quite mast cells. The team went on to confirm that stem cell factor was not required for the mast cell progenitors to survive, multiply and mature. Instead, their work identified two other growth factors, interleukin 3 and 6, as important for mast cell development.
In a press release, lead author Joakim Dahlin, explained how these new insights could lead to new therapies:
“The study increases our understanding of how mast cells are formed and could be important in the development of new therapies, for example for mastocytosis for which treatment with imatinib/Glivec is not effective. One hypothesis that we will now test is whether interleukin 3 can be a new target in the treatment of mast cell-driven diseases.”
Patient in CIRM-funded trial regains use of arms, hands and fingers will throw 1st pitch in MLB game.
We end this week with some heart-warming news from Asterias Biotherapeutics. You avid Stem Cellar readers will remember our story about Lucas Lindner several weeks back. Lucas was paralyzed from the neck down after a terrible car accident. Shortly after the accident, in June of 2016, he enrolled in Asterias’ CIRM-funded trial testing an embryonic stem cell-based therapy to treat his injury. And this Sunday, August 13th, we’re excited to report that due to regaining the use of his arms, hands and fingers since the treatment, he will throw out the first pitch of a Major League Baseball game in Milwaukee. Congrats to Lucas!
For more about Lucas’ story, watch this video produced by Asterias Biotherapeutics:
The Stem Cellar 
