A team of UC San Diego researchers recently published novel preeclampsia models to aid in understanding this pregnancy complication that occurs in one of 25 U.S. pregnancies. Researchers include (left to right): Ojeni Touma, Mariko Horii, Robert Morey and Tony Bui. Credit: UC San Diego
Pregnant women often tread uncertain waters in regards to their health and well-being as well as that of their babies. Many conditions can arise and one of these is preeclampsia, a type of pregnancy complication that occurs in approximately one in 25 pregnancies in the United States according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC). It occurs when expecting mothers develop high blood pressure, typically after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and that in turn reduces the blood supply to the baby. This can lead to serious, even fatal, complications for both the mother and baby.
A CIRM supported study using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), a kind of stem cell that can turn into virtually any cell type, was able to create a “disease in a dish” model in order to better understand preeclampsia.
Credit: UC San Diego
For this study, Mariko Horii, M.D., and her team of researchers at the UC San Diego School of Medicine obtained cells from the placenta of babies born under preeclampsia conditions. These cells were then “reprogrammed” into a stem cell-like state, otherwise known as iPSCs. The iPSCs were then turned into cells resembling placental cells in early pregnancy. This enabled the team to create the preeclampsia “disease in the dish” model. Using this model, they were then able to study the processes that cause, result from, or are otherwise associated with preeclampsia.
The findings revealed that cellular defects observed are related to an abnormal response in the environment in the womb. Specifically, they found that preeclampsia was associated with a low-oxygen environment in the uterus. The researchers used a computer modeling system at UC San Diego known as Comet to detail the differences between normal and preeclampsia placental tissue.
Horii and her team hope that these findings not only shed more light on the environment in the womb observed in preeclampsia, but also provided insight for future development of diagnostic tools and identification of potential medications. Furthermore, they hope that their iPSC disease model can be used to study other placenta-associated pregnancy disorders such as fetal growth restriction, miscarriage, and preterm birth.
The team’s next steps are to develop a 3D model to better study the relationship between environment and development of placental disease.
In a news release from UC San Diego, Horri elaborates more on these future goals.
“Currently, model systems are in two-dimensional cultures with single-cell types, which are hard to study as the placenta consists of maternal and fetal cells with multiple cell types, such as placental cells (fetal origin), maternal immune cells and maternal endometrial cells. Combining these cell types together into a three-dimensional structure will lead to a better understanding of the more complex interactions and cell-to-cell signaling, which can then be applied to the disease setting to further understand pathophysiology.”
The full study was published in Scientific Reports.
If someone told you they were working on lungs in a dish you might be forgiven for thinking that’s the worst idea for a new recipe you have ever heard of. But in the case of Dr. Evan Snyder and his team at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute it could be a recipe for a powerful new tool against COVID-19.
Earlier this month the CIRM Board approved almost $250,000 for Dr. Snyder and his team to use human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs), a type of stem cell that can be created by reprogramming skin or blood cells, to create any other cell in the body, including lung cells.
These cells will then be engineered to become 3D lung organoids or “mini lungs in a dish”. The importance of this is that these cells resemble human lungs in a way animal models do not. They have the same kinds of cells, structures and even blood vessels that lungs do.
These cells will then be infected with the coronavirus and then be used to test two drugs to see if those drugs are effective against the virus.
In a news release Dr. Snyder says these cells have some big advantages over animal models, the normal method for early stage testing of new therapies.
“Mini lungs will also help us answer why some people with COVID-19 fare worse than others. Because they are made from hiPSCs, which come from patients and retain most of the characteristics of those patients, we can make ‘patient-specific’ mini lungs. We can compare the drug responses of mini lungs created from Caucasian, African American, and Latino men and women, as well as patients with a reduced capacity to fight infection to make sure that therapies work effectively in all patients. If not, we can adjust the dose or drug regime to help make the treatment more effective.
“We can also use the mini lungs experimentally to evaluate the effects of environmental toxins that come from cigarette smoking or vaping to make sure the drugs are still effective; and emulate the microenvironmental conditions in the lungs of patients with co-morbidities such as diabetes, and heart or kidney disease.”
To date CIRM has funded 15 projects targeting COVID-19, including three that are in clinical trials.
A few weeks ago we held a Facebook Live “Ask the Stem Cell Team About Parkinson’s Disease” event. As you can imagine we got lots of questions but, because of time constraints, only had time to answer a few. Thanks to my fabulous CIRM colleagues, Dr. Lila Collins and Dr. Kent Fitzgerald, for putting together answers to some of the other questions. Here they are.
Kent Fitzgerald, PhD
Q:It seems like we have been hearing for years that stem cells can help people with Parkinson’s, why is it taking so long?
A: Early experiments in Sweden using fetal tissue did provide a proof of concept for the strategy of replacing dopamine producing cells damaged or lost in Parkinson’s disease (PD) . At first, this seemed like we were on the cusp of a cell therapy cure for PD, however, we soon learned based on some side effects seen with this approach (in particular dyskinesias or uncontrollable muscle movements) that the solution was not as simple as once thought.
While this didn’t produce the answer it did provide some valuable lessons.
The importance of dopaminergic (DA) producing cell type and the location in the brain of the transplant. Simply placing the replacement cells in the brain is not enough. It was initially thought that the best site to place these DA cells is a region in the brain called the SN, because this area helps to regulate movement. However, this area also plays a role in learning, emotion and the brains reward system. This is effectively a complex wiring system that exists in a balance, “rewiring” it wrong can have unintended and significant side effects.
Another factor impacting progress has been understanding the importance of disease stage. If the disease is too advanced when cells are given then the transplant may no longer be able to provide benefit. This is because DA transplants replace the lost neurons we use to control movement, but other connected brain systems have atrophied in response to losing input from the lost neurons. There is a massive amount of work (involving large groups and including foundations like the Michael J Fox Foundation) seeking to identify PD early in the disease course where therapies have the best chance of showing an effect. Clinical trials will ultimately help to determine the best timing for treatment intervention.
Ideally, in addition to the cell therapies that would replace lost or damaged cells we also want to find a therapy that slows or stops the underlying biology causing progression of the disease.
So, I think we’re going to see more gene therapy trials including those targeting the small minority of PD that is driven by known mutations. In fact, Prevail Therapeutics will soon start a trial in patients with GBA1 mutations. Hopefully, replacing the enzyme in this type of genetic PD will prevent degeneration.
And, we are also seeing gene therapy approaches to address forms of PD that we don’t know the cause, including a trial to rescue sick neurons with GDNF which is a neurotrophic factor (which helps support the growth and survival of these brain cells) led by Dr Bankiewicz and trials by Axovant and Voyager, partnered with Neurocrine aimed at restoring dopamine generation in the brain.
A small news report came out earlier this year about a recently completed clinical trial by Roche Pharma and Prothena. This addressed the build up in the brain of what are called lewy bodies, a problem common to many forms of PD. While the official trial results aren’t published yet, a recent press release suggests reason for optimism. Apparently, the treatment failed to statistically improve the main clinical measurement, but other measured endpoints saw improvement and it’s possible an updated form of this treatment will be tested again in the hopes of seeing an improved effect.
Finally, I’d like to call attention to the G force trials. Gforce is a global collaborative effort to drive the field forward combining lessons learned from previous studies with best practices for cell replacement in PD. These first-in-human safety trials to replace the dopaminergic neurons (DANs) damaged by PD have shared design features including identifying what the best goals are and how to measure those.
And the Summit PD trial, Dr Jeanne Loring of Aspen Neuroscience.
Taken together these should tell us quite a lot about the best way to replace these critical neurons in PD.
As with any completely novel approach in medicine, much validation and safety work must be completed before becoming available to patients
The current approach (for cell replacement) has evolved significantly from those early studies to use cells engineered in the lab to be much more specialized and representing the types believed to have the best therapeutic effects with low probability of the side effects (dyskinesias) seen in earlier trials.
If we don’t really know the cause of Parkinson’s disease, how can we cure it or develop treatments to slow it down?
PD can now be divided into major categories including 1. Sporadic, 2. Familial.
For the sporadic cases, there are some hallmarks in the biology of the neurons affected in the disease that are common among patients. These can be things like oxidative stress (which damages cells), or clumps of proteins (like a-synuclein) that serve to block normal cell function and become toxic, killing the DA neurons.
The second class of “familial” cases all share one or more genetic changes that are believed to cause the disease. Mutations in genes (like GBA, LRRK2, PRKN, SNCA) make up around fifteen percent of the population affected, but the similarity in these gene mutations make them attractive targets for drug development.
CIRM has funded projects to generate “disease in a dish” models using neurons made from adults with Parkinson’s disease. Stem cell-derived models like this have enabled not only a deep probing of the underlying biology in Parkinson’s, which has helped to identify new targets for investigation, but have also allowed for the testing of possible therapies in these cell-based systems.
iPSC-derived neurons are believed to be an excellent model for this type of work as they can possess known familial mutations but also show the rest of the patients genetic background which may also be a contributing factor to the development of PD. They therefore contain both known and unknown factors that can be tested for effective therapy development.
I have heard of scientists creating things called brain organoids, clumps of brain cells that can act a little bit like a brain. Can we use these to figure out what’s happening in the brain of people with Parkinson’s and to develop treatments?
There is considerable excitement about the use of brain organoids as a way of creating a model for the complex cell-to-cell interactions in the brain. Using these 3D organoid models may allow us to gain a better understanding of what happens inside the brain, and develop ways to treat issues like PD.
The organoids can contain multiple cell types including microglia which have been a hot topic of research in PD as they are responsible for cleaning up and maintaining the health of cells in the brain. CIRM has funded the Salk Institute’s Dr. Fred Gage’s to do work in this area.
If you go online you can find lots of stem cells clinics, all over the US, that claim they can use stem cells to help people with Parkinson’s. Should I go to them?
In a word, no! These clinics offer a wide variety of therapies using different kinds of cells or tissues (including the patient’s own blood or fat cells) but they have one thing in common; none of these therapies have been tested in a clinical trial to show they are even safe, let alone effective. These clinics also charge thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars these therapies, and because it’s not covered by insurance this all comes out of the patient’s pocket.
These predatory clinics are peddling hope, but are unable to back it up with any proof it will work. They frequently have slick, well-designed websites, and “testimonials” from satisfied customers. But if they really had a treatment for Parkinson’s they wouldn’t be running clinics out of shopping malls they’d be operating huge medical centers because the worldwide need for an effective therapy is so great.
Here’s a link to the page on our website that can help you decide if a clinical trial or “therapy” is right for you.
Is it better to use your own cells turned into brain cells, or cells from a healthy donor?
This is the BIG question that nobody has evidence to provide an answer to. At least not yet.
Let’s start with the basics. Why would you want to use your own cells? The main answer is the immune system. Transplanted cells can really be viewed as similar to an organ (kidney, liver etc) transplant. As you likely know, when a patient receives an organ transplant the patient’s immune system will often recognize the tissue/organ as foreign and attack it. This can result in the body rejecting what is supposed to be a life-saving organ. This is why people receiving organ transplants are typically placed on immunosuppressive “anti-rejection “drugs to help stop this reaction.
In the case of transplanted dopamine producing neurons from a donor other than the patient, it’s likely that the immune system would eliminate these cells after a short while and this would stop any therapeutic benefit from the cells. A caveat to this is that the brain is a “somewhat” immune privileged organ which means that normal immune surveillance and rejection doesn’t always work the same way with the brain. In fact analysis of the brains collected from the first Swedish patients to receive fetal transplants showed (among other things) that several patients still had viable transplanted cells (persistence) in their brains.
Transplanting DA neurons made from the patient themselves (the iPSC method) would effectively remove this risk of the immune system attack as the cells would not be recognized as foreign.
CIRM previously funded a discovery project with Jeanne Loring from Scripps Research Institute that sought to generate DA neurons from Parkinson’s patients for use as a potential transplant therapy in these same patients. This project has since been taken on by a company formed, by Dr Loring, called Aspen Neuroscience. They hope to bring this potential therapy into clinical trials in the near future.
A commonly cited potential downside to this approach is that patients with genetic (familial) Parkinson’s would be receiving neurons generated with cells that may have the same mutations that caused the problem in the first place. However, as it can typically take decades to develop PD, these cells could likely function for a long time. and prove to be better than any current therapies.
Creating cells from each individual patient (called autologous) is likely to be very expensive and possibly even cost-prohibitive. That is why many researchers are working on developing an “off the shelf” therapy, one that uses cells from a donor (called allogeneic)would be available as and when it’s needed.
When the coronavirus happened, it seemed as if overnight the FDA was approving clinical trials for treatments for the virus. Why can’t it work that fast for Parkinson’s disease?
While we don’t know what will ultimately work for COVID-19, we know what the enemy looks like. We also have lots of experience treating viral infections and creating vaccines. The coronavirus has already been sequenced, so we are building upon our understanding of other viruses to select a course to interrupt it. In contrast, the field is still trying to understand the drivers of PD that would respond to therapeutic targeting and therefore, it’s not precisely clear how best to modify the course of neurodegenerative disease. So, in one sense, while it’s not as fast as we’d like it to be, the work on COVID-19 has a bit of a head start.
Much of the early work on COVID-19 therapies is also centered on re-purposing therapies that were previously in development. As a result, these potential treatments have a much easier time entering clinical trials as there is a lot known about them (such as how safe they are etc.). That said, there are many additional therapeutic strategies (some of which CIRM is funding) which are still far off from being tested in the clinic.
The concern of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is often centered on the safety of a proposed therapy. The less known, the more cautious they tend to be.
As you can imagine, transplanting cells into the brain of a PD patient creates a significant potential for problems and so the FDA needs to be cautious when approving clinical trials to ensure patient safety.
Retina affected by age-related macular degeneration
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of vision loss in people over 60. It affects 10 million Americans. That’s more than cataracts and glaucoma combined. The causes of AMD are not known but are believed to involve a mixture of hereditary and environmental factors. There is no treatment for it.
Now, in a
CIRM-funded study, researchers at UC San Diego (UCSD) have used stem cells to
help identify genetic elements that could provide some clues as to the cause,
and maybe give some ideas on how to treat it.
Before we get into what the researchers did let’s take a look at what AMD does. At a basic level it attacks the retina, the thin layer of tissue that lines the back of the eye. The retina receives light, turns it into electrical signals and sends it to the brain which turns it into a visual image.
The disease destroys the macula, the part of the retina that controls our central vision. At first, sight becomes blurred or fuzzy but over time it progresses to the point where central vision is almost completely destroyed.
To try and
understand why this happens the team at UCSD took skin samples from six people
with AMD and, using the iPSC method, turned those cells into the kinds of cell found in the retina. Because
these cells came from people who had AMD they now displayed the same
characteristics as AMD-affected retinal cells. This allowed the researchers to
create what is called a “disease-in-a-dish” model that allowed them to see, in
real time, what is happening in AMD.
They were able to
identify a genetic variant that reduces production of a protein called VEGFA,
which is known to promote the growth of new blood vessels.
In a news release Kelly Frazer, director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine at UCSD and the lead author of the study, said the results were unexpected.
Kelly Frazer, PhD, UC San Diego
“We didn’t start with the VEGFA gene when we went looking for genetic causes of AMD. But we
were surprised to find that with samples from just six people, this genetic
variation clearly emerged as a causal factor.”
Frazer says this
discovery, published in the journal Stem
Cell Reports, could
ultimately lead to new approaches to developing new treatments for AMD.
Sergiu Pasca’s three-dimensional culture makes it possible to watch how three different brain-cell types – oligodendrocytes (green), neurons (magenta) and astrocytes (blue) – interact in a dish as they do in a developing human brain. Courtesy of the Pasca lab
Neurological diseases are among the most daunting diagnoses for a patient to receive, because they impact how the individual interacts with their surroundings. Central to our ability to provide better treatment options for these patients, is scientists’ capability to understand the biological factors that influence disease development and progression. Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have made an important step in providing neuroscientists a better tool to understand the brain.
While animal models are excellent systems to study the intricacies of different diseases, the ability to translate any findings to humans is relatively limited. The next best option is to study human stem cell derived tissues in the laboratory. The problem with the currently available laboratory-derived systems for studying the brain, however, is the limited longevity and diversity of neuronal cell types. Dr. Sergiu Pasca’s team was able to overcome these hurdles, as detailed in their study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
A new approach
Specifically, Dr. Pasca’s group developed a method to differentiate or transform skin derived human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs – which are capable of becoming any cell type) into brain-like structures that mimic how oligodendrocytes mature during brain development. Oligodendrocytes are most well known for their role in myelinating neurons, in effect creating a protective sheath around the cell to protect its ability to communicate with other brain cells. Studying oligodendrocytes in culture systems is challenging because they arise later in brain development, and it is difficult to generate and maintain them with other cell types found in the brain.
These scientists circumvented this problem by using a unique combination of growth factors and nutrients to culture the oligodendrocytes, and found that they behaved very similarly to oligodendrocytes isolated from humans. Most excitingly, they observed that the stem cell-derived oligodendrocytes were able to myelinate other neurons in the culture system. Therefore they were both physically and functionally similar to human oligodendrocytes.
Importantly, the scientists were also able to generate astrocytes alongside the oligodendrocytes. Astrocytes perform many important functions such as providing essential nutrients and directing the electrical signals that help cells in the brain communicate with each other. In a press release, Dr. Pasca explains the importance of generating multiple cell types in this in vitro system:
“We now have multiple cell types interacting in one single
culture. This permits us to look close-up at how the main cellular players in
the human brain are talking to each other.”
This in vitro or laboratory-developed system has the potential to help scientists better understand oligodendrocytes in the context of diseases such as multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy, both of which stem from improper myelination of brain nerve cells.
This work was partially supported by a CIRM grant.
It’s always exciting to read a science article featuring a talented scientist who is breaking boundaries in the field of regenerative medicine. It’s especially exciting to us at CIRM when the scientist is a CIRM grantee.
Last week, OZY published a fun and inspiring piece on Stanford scientist Joe Wu. Dr. Wu is the Director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and his lab studies how stem cells (both adult and pluripotent) function and how they can be used to model heart diseases and screen for new drug therapies. He also is a CIRM grantee and has a Disease Team Therapy Development grant that aims to clinically test human embryonic stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (heart cells) in end stage heart failure patients.
Dr. Joe Wu. (Image Source: Sean Culligan/OZY)
The OZY piece does a great job of highlighting Dr. Wu’s recent efforts to use human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) to make heart tissue in a dish and model cardiovascular disease. And without getting too technical, the article explains Dr. Wu’s larger mission to combine precision medicine and stem cell research to identify drugs that would be best suited for specific patient populations.
The article commented,
“He envisions treatments based on an individual’s own iPS cells. For example, a popular breast cancer drug has an 8 percent chance of giving patients heart failure. In Wu’s world, we’d test the drug on stem cells first, and if a patient lands in that 8 percent, begin treatment for the side effects preemptively or avoiding the drug totally and avoiding heart failure, too.”
Basically, Dr. Wu sees the future of clinical trials in a dish using human stem cells. “His goal is to take these stem cells from thousands of patients to create a genetically diverse enough bank that will allow for “clinical trials in a dish” — Wu’s go-to phrase.”
Instead of following the traditional drug development paradigm that takes more than 10 years, billions of dollars, and unfortunately usually ends in failure, Dr. Wu wants to follow an accelerated path where stem cells are used for drug toxicity and efficacy testing.
This alternative path could improve overall drug development and approval by the FDA. The article explained,
“Testing drugs on stem cells will give big pharma and the FDA vastly improved heads up for toxic complications. Stem cells are “absolutely” the best avenue going forward, says Norman Stockbridge, director of the division of cardiovascular and renal products at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.”
Not everyone is on the same page with Dr. Wu’s bold vision of the future of precision medicine, stem cells, and treatments for heart disease. Some believe he is overly ambitious, however top scientists in the stem cell field have praised Dr. Wu’s “systematic approach” to research and how he doesn’t stop at data discovery, he focuses on the big picture and how his work can ultimately help patients.
You can read more about Dr. Wu’s research on his lab website and I highly encourage you to check out the OZY article which is a great example of science communication for the general public.
At the beginning, it feels like the flu: aches, pains and vomiting. But then you begin to experience severe cold and shivering, followed by fever and sweating—a cycle, known as tertian fever, that repeats itself every two days. And that’s when you know: you’ve contracted malaria.
Malaria is caused by Plasmodium parasites and spread to people through the bites of infected mosquitoes
But you wouldn’t be alone. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 200 million people, mostly in Africa, contracted the disease in 2013. Of those, nearly half a million—mainly children—died. There is no cure for malaria, and the parasites that cause the disease are quickly developing resistance to treatments. This is a global public health crisis, and experts agree that in order to halt its spread, they must begin thinking outside the box.
Enter Sangeeta Bhatia, renowned biomedical engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)—who, along with her team, has devised a quick and easy way to test out life-saving drug candidates that could give doctors and aid workers on the front lines fresh ammunition.
One of the key hurdles facing scientists has been the nature of the disease’s progression itself. Caused by parasites transmitted via infected mosquitos, the disease first takes hold in the liver. It is only after a few weeks that it enters the blood stream, causing symptoms. By then, the disease is so entrenched within the patient that complete eradication is extremely difficult. Even if the patient recovers, he or she will likely suffer relapses weeks, months or even years later.
The trick, therefore, is to catch the disease before it enters the blood stream. To that effect, several promising drugs have been put forth, and scientists are eager to test them out on liver tissue infected with malaria. Except that they can’t: liver tissue donors are few and far between, and lack the genetic diversity needed for large-scale testing.
Liver-stage malarial infection in iPSC-derived liver cells, eight days after infection. [Credit Ng et al.]
So Bhatia and her team developed a new solution: they’d make the cells themselves. Reporting in today’s issue of Stem Cell Reports, the team describes how they transformed human skin cells into liver cells, by way of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS cell) technology. Then, by infecting these cells with the malaria parasite, they could test a variety of drug candidates to see which worked best. As Bhatia explained:
“Our platform can be used for testing candidate drugs that act against the parasite in the early liver stages, before it causes disease in the blood and spreads back to the mosquito vector. This is especially important given the increasing occurrence of drug-resistant strains of malaria in the field.”
Bhatia has long been known for finding innovative solutions to longstanding issues in science and medicine. Just last year, she was awarded the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Prize in part for her invention of a paper-based urine test for prostate cancer.
In this study, the researchers bombarded malaria-infected liver cells with two drugs, called atovaguone and primaquine, each developed to treat the disease specifically at the liver stage.
The results, though preliminary, are promising: the cells responded well to both drugs, underscoring the value of this approach to testing drugs—an approach that many call “disease in a dish.”
The potential utility of “disease in a dish” studies cannot be understated, as it gives researchers the ability to screen drugs on cells from individuals of varying genetic backgrounds, and discover which drug, or drugs, works best for each group.
Shengyong Ng, a postdoctoral researcher in Bhatia’s lab, spoke of what this study could mean for disease research:
“The use of iPSC-derived liver cells to model liver-stage malaria in a dish opens the door to study the influence of host genetics on antimalarial drug efficacy, and lays the foundation for their use in antimalarial drug discovery.”
Find out more about how scientists use stem cells to model disease in a dish in our video series, Stem Cells In Your Face.
The human stomach can be a delicate organ. For example, even the healthiest stomach can be compromised by H. pylori bacteria—a tiny but ruthless pathogen which has shown to be linked to both peptic ulcer disease and stomach cancer.
The best way to study how an H. pylori infection leads to conditions like cancer would be to recreate that exact environment, right down to the stomach itself, in the lab. But that task has proven far more difficult than originally imagined.
Part of a miniature stomach grown in the lab, stained to reveal various cells found in normal human stomachs [Credit: Kyle McCracken]
Further, they were then able to test how human stomach tissue reacts to an invasion by H. pylori—a huge leap forward toward one day developing treatments for potentially deadly stomach disease.
Reporting in today’s issue of the journal Nature, senior author Jim Wells describes his team’s method of turning human pluripotent stem cells into stomach cells, known as gastric cells. Wells explained the importance of their breakthrough in a news release:
“Until this study, no one had generated gastric cells from human pluripotent stem cells. In addition, we discovered how to promote formation of three-dimensional gastric tissue with complex architecture and cellular composition.”
The team called this stomach tissue gastric organoids, a kind of ‘mini-stomach’ that mimicked the major cellular processes of a normal, functioning human stomach. Developing a human model of stomach development—and stomach disease—has long been a goal among scientists and clinicians, as animal models of the stomach did not accurately reflect what would be happening in a human stomach.
In this study, the research team identified the precise series of steps that can turn stem cells into gastric cells. And then they set these steps in motion.
Over the course of a month, the team coaxed the formation of gastric organoids that measured less than 1/10th of one inch in diameter. But even with this small size, the team could view the cellular processes that drive stomach formation—and discover precisely what happens when that process goes awry.
But what most intrigued the researchers, which also included first author University of Cincinnati’s Kyle McCracken, was how quickly an H. pylori infection impacted the health of the stomach tissue.
“Within 24 hours, the bacteria had triggered biochemical changes in the organ,” said McCracken.
According to McCracken, as the H. pylori infection spread from cell to cell, the researchers also recorded the activation of c-Met, a gene known to be linked to stomach cancer—further elucidating the relationship between H. pylori and this form of stomach disease.
Somewhat surprisingly, little was known about how gastric cells play a role in obesity-related diseases, such as type 2 diabetes. But thanks to Wells, McCracken and the entire Cincinnati Children’s research team—we are that much closer to shedding light on this process.
Wells also credits his team’s reliance on years of preliminary data performed in research labs around the world with helping them reach this landmark:
“This milestone would not have been possible if it hadn’t been for previous studies from many other basic researchers on understanding embryonic organ development.”
Saying “let’s put some shrimp on the barbie” will whet an Australian’s appetite for barbequed prawns but for an American it conjures up an odd image of placing shrimp on a Barbie doll. This sort of word play confusion doesn’t just happen across continents but also between scientists and the public.
Take “disease in a dish” for example. To a stem cell scientist, this phrase right away describes a powerful way to study human disease in the lab using a Nobel Prize winning technique called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). But to a non-scientist it sounds like a scene from some disgusting sci-fi horror cooking show.
Our latest video Disease in a Dish: That’s a Mouthful takes a lighthearted approach to help clear up any head scratching over this phrase. Although it’s injected with humor, the video focuses on a dreadful disease: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, it’s a disorder in which nerve cells that control muscle movement die. There are no effective treatments and it’s always fatal, usually within 3 to 5 years after diagnosis.
To explain disease in a dish, the video summarizes a Science Translation Medicine publication of CIRM-funded research reported by the laboratory of Robert Baloh, M.D., Ph.D., director of Cedars-Sinai’s multidisciplinary ALS Program. In the study, skin cells from patients with an inherited form of ALS were used to create nerve cells in a petri dish that exhibit the same genetic defects found in the neurons of ALS patients. With this disease in a dish, the team identified a possible cause of the disease: the cells overproduce molecules causing a toxic buildup that affects neuron function. The researchers devised a way to block the toxic buildup, which may point to a new therapeutic strategy.
In a press release, Clive Svendsen, Ph.D., a co-author on the publication and director of the Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute had this perspective on the results:
“ALS may be the cruelest, most severe neurological disease, but I believe the stem cell approach used in this collaborative effort holds the key to unlocking the mysteries of this and other devastating disorders.”
The video is the pilot episode of Stem Cells in Your Face, which we hope will be an ongoing informational series that helps explain the latest advances toward stem cell-based therapies.
For more information about CIRM-funded ALS research, visit our ALS fact sheet.
A Stanford study adds a powerful example to our growing list of diseases that have yielded their secrets to iPS-type stem cells grown in a dish. These “disease-in-a-dish” models have become one of the most rapidly growing areas of stem cell science. But this time they did not start with skin from a patient with a genetic disease and see how that genetic defect manifests in cells in a dish. Instead they started with normal tissue and looked at how the resulting cells reacted to viral infection.
They were looking at a nasty heart infection called viral myocarditis, which can begin to cause damage to heart muscle within hours and often leads to death. Existing antiviral drugs have only a modest impact on reducing these infections. So even though there is an urgent need to find better drugs, animal models have not proven very useful and there is no ready supply of human heart tissue for lab study.
To create a ready supply of human heart tissue Joseph Wu’s CIRM-funded team at Stanford started with skin samples from three healthy donors, reprogrammed them into iPS cells and then matured those into heart muscle tissue. Then they took one of the main culprits of this infection, coxsackievirus, and labeled it with a fluorescent marker so they could track its activity in the heart cells.
They were able to verify that the virus infected the cells in a dish just as they do in normal heart tissue. And when they tried treating the cells with four existing antiviral drugs they saw the same modest decrease in the rate of infected cells seen in patients. For one of the drugs that had been shown to cause some heart toxicity, they also saw some damage to the cells in the dish.
They propose that their model can now be used to screen thousands of compounds for potentially more effective and safer drugs. They published their results in Circulation Research July 15.
![Liver-stage malarial infection in iPSC-derived liver cells, eight days after infection. [Credit Ng et al.]](https://aholdencirm.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/85933.jpg)
![Part of a miniature stomach grown in the lab, stained to reveal various cells found in normal human stomachs [Credit: Kyle McCracken]](https://aholdencirm.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/mccracken_image6-crop-reduced.jpg)
The Stem Cellar 