Zika

Stem cell stories that caught our eye: the tale of a tail that grows back and Zika’s devious Trojan Horse

/ Todd Dubnicoff / Leave a comment

The tale of a tail that grows back (Kevin McCormack)

Ask people what they know about geckos and the odds are they’ll tell you geckos have English accents and sell car insurance. Which tells you a lot more about the power of advertising than it does about the level of knowledge about lizards. Which is a shame, because the gecko has some amazing qualities, not the least of which is its ability to re-grow its tail. Now some researchers have discovered how it regenerates its tail, and what they’ve learned could one day help people with spinal cord injuries.

Geckos often detach a bit of their tail when being pursued by a predator, then grow a new one over the course of 30 days. Researchers at the University of Guelph in Canada found that the lizards use a combination of stem cells and proteins to do that.

They found that geckos have stem cells in their tail called radial glias. Normally these cells are dormant but that changes when the lizard loses its tail. As Matthew Vickaryous, lead author of the study, said in a news release:

“But when the tail comes off everything temporarily changes. The cells make different proteins and begin proliferating more in response to the injury. Ultimately, they make a brand new spinal cord. Once the injury is healed and the spinal cord is restored, the cells return to a resting state.”

Vickaryous hopes that understanding how the gecko can repair what is essentially an injury to its spinal cord, we’ll be better able to develop ways to help people with the same kind of injury.

The study is published in the Journal of Comparative Neurology.

Zika virus uses Trojan Horse strategy to infect developing brain
In April 2015, the World Health Organization declared that infection by Zika virus and its connection to severe birth defects was an international public health emergency. The main concern has been the virus’ link to microcephaly, a condition in which abnormal brain development causes a smaller than normal head size at birth. Microcephaly leads to number of problems in these infants including developmental delays, seizures, hearing loss and difficulty swallowing.

A false color micrograph shows microglia cells (green) infected by the Zika virus (blue). Image Muotri lab/UCSD

Since that time, researchers have been racing to better understand how Zika infection affects brain development with the hope of finding treatment strategies. Now, a CIRM-funded study in Human Molecular Genetics reports important new insights about how Zika virus may be transmitted from infected pregnant women to their unborn babies.

The UCSD researchers behind the study chose to focus on microglia cells. In a press release, team leader Alysson Muotri explained their rationale for targeting these cells:

“During embryogenesis — the early stages of prenatal development — cells called microglia form in the yolk sac and then disperse throughout the central nervous system (CNS) of the developing child. Considering the timing of [Zika] transmission, we hypothesized that microglia might be serving as a Trojan horse to transport the virus during invasion of the CNS.”

In the developing brain, microglia continually travel throughout the brain and clear away dead or infected cells. Smuggling itself aboard microglia would give Zika a devious way to slip through the body’s defenses and infect other brain cells. And that’s exactly what Dr. Muotri’s team found.

Using human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), they generated brain stem cells – the kind found in the developing brain – and in lab dish infected them with Zika virus. When iPSC-derived microglia were added to the infected neural stem cells, the microglia gobbled them up and destroyed them, just as they would do in the brain. But when those microglia were placed next to uninfected brain stem cells, the Zika virus was easily transmitted to those cells. Muotri summed up the results this way:

“Our findings show that the Zika virus can infect these early microglia, sneaking into the brain where they transmit the virus to other brain cells, resulting in the devastating neurological damage we see in some newborns.”

The team went on to show that an FDA-approved drug to treat hepatitis – a liver disease often caused by viral infection – was effective at decreasing the infection of brain stem cells by Zika-carrying microglia. Since these studies were done in petri dishes, more research will be required to confirm that the microglia are a true drug target for stopping the devastating impact of Zika on newborns.

Caught our eye: new Americans 4 Cures video, better mini-brains reveal Zika insights and iPSC recipes go head-to-head

/ Todd Dubnicoff / Leave a comment

How stem cell research gives patients hope (Karen Ring).
You can learn about the latest stem cell research for a given disease in seconds with a quick google search. You’ll find countless publications, news releases and blogs detailing the latest advancements that are bringing scientists and clinicians closer to understanding why diseases happen and how to treat or cure them.

But one thing these forms of communications lack is the personal aspect. A typical science article explains the research behind the study at the beginning and ends with a concluding statement usually saying how the research could one day lead to a treatment for X disease. It’s interesting, but not always the most inspirational way to learn about science when the formula doesn’t change.

However, I’ve started to notice that more and more, institutes and organizations are creating videos that feature the scientists/doctors that are developing these treatments AND the patients that the treatments could one day help. This is an excellent way to communicate with the public! When you watch and listen to a patient talk about their struggles with their disease and how there aren’t effective treatments at the moment, it becomes clear why funding and advancing research is important.

We have a great example of a patient-focused stem cell video to share with you today thanks to our friends at Americans for Cures, a non-profit organization that advocates for stem cell research. They posted a new video this week in honor of Stem Cell Awareness Day featuring patients and patient advocates responding to the question, “What does stem cell research give you hope for?”. Many of these patients and advocates are CIRM Stem Cell Champions that we’ve featured on our website, blog, and YouTube channel.

Americans for Cures is encouraging viewers to take their own stab at answering this important question by sharing a short message (on their website) or recording a video that they will share with the stem cell community. We hope that you are up for the challenge!

Mini-brains help uncover some of Zika’s secrets (Kevin McCormack).
One of the hardest things about trying to understand how a virus like Zika can damage the brain is that it’s hard to see what’s going on inside a living brain. That’s not surprising. It’s not considered polite to do an autopsy of someone’s brain while they are still using it.

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Microscopic image of a mini brain organoid, showing layered neural tissue and different groups of neural stem cells (in blue, red and magenta) giving rise to neurons (green). Image: Novitch laboratory/UCLA

But now researchers at UCLA have come up with a way to mimic human brains, and that is enabling them to better understand how Zika inflicts damage on a developing fetus.

For years researchers have been using stem cells to help create “mini brain organoids”, essentially clusters of some of the cells found in the brain. They were helpful in studying some aspects of brain behavior but limited because they were very small and didn’t reflect the layered complexity of the brain.

In a study, published in the journal Cell Reports, UCLA researchers showed how they developed a new method of creating mini-brain organoids that better reflected a real brain. For example, the organoids had many of the cells found in the human cortex, the part of the brain that controls thought, speech and decision making. They also found that the different cells could communicate with each other, the way they do in a real brain.

They used these organoids to see how the Zika virus attacks the brain, damaging cells during the earliest stages of brain development.

In a news release, Momoko Watanabe, the study’s first author, says these new organoids can open up a whole new way of looking at the brain:

“While our organoids are in no way close to being fully functional human brains, they mimic the human brain structure much more consistently than other models. Other scientists can use our methods to improve brain research because the data will be more accurate and consistent from experiment to experiment and more comparable to the real human brain.”

iPSC recipes go head-to-head: which one is best?
In the ten years since the induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technique was first reported, many different protocols, or recipes, for reprogramming adult cells, like skin, into iPSCs have been developed. These variations bring up the question of which reprogramming recipe is best. This question isn’t the easiest to answer given the many variables that one needs to test. Due to the cost and complexity of the methods, comparisons of iPSCs generated in different labs are often performed. But one analysis found significant lab-to-lab variability which can really muck up the ability to make a fair comparison.

A Stanford University research team, led by Dr. Joseph Wu, sought to eliminate these confounding variables so that any differences found could be attributed specifically to the recipe. So, they tested six different reprogramming methods in the same lab, using cells from the same female donor. And in turn, these cells were compared to a female source of embryonic stem cells, the gold standard of pluripotent stem cells. They reported their findings this week in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

Previous studies had hinted that the reprogramming protocol could affect the ability to fully specialize iPSCs into a particular cell type. But based on their comparisons, the protocol chosen did not have a significant impact on how well iPSCs can be matured. Differences in gene activity are a key way that researchers do side-by-side comparisons of iPSCs and embryonic stem cells. And based on the results in this study, the reprogramming method itself can influence the differences. A gene activity comparison of all the iPSCs with the embryonic stem cells found the polycomb repressive complex – a set of genes that play an important role in embryonic development and are implicated in cancer – had the biggest difference.

In a “Behind the Paper” report to the journal, first author Jared Churko, says that based on these findings, their lab now mostly uses one reprogramming protocol – which uses the Sendai virus to deliver the reprogramming genes to the cells:

“The majority of our hiPSC lines are now generated using Sendai virus. This is due to the ease in generating hiPSCs using this method as well as the little to no chance of transgene integration [a case in which a reprogramming gene inserts into the cells’ DNA which could lead to cancerous growth].”

Still, he adds a caveat that the virus does tend to linger in the cells which suggests that:

“cell source or reprogramming method utilized, each hiPSC line still requires robust characterization prior to them being used for downstream experimentation or clinical use.”

 

Stem cell stories that caught our eye: How Zika may impact adult brains; Move over CRISPR there’s a new kid in town; How our bodies store fat

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

Here are some stem cell stories that caught our eye this past week. Some are groundbreaking science, others are of personal interest to us, and still others are just fun.

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Zika mosquito

Zika virus could impact adult brains

It’s not just a baby’s developing brain that is vulnerable to the Zika virus, adult brains may be too. A new study shows that some stem cells that help repair damage in the adult brain can be impacted by Zika. This is the first time we’ve had any indication this could be a problem in a fully developed brain.

The study, in the journal Cell Stem Cell, looked at neural progenitors, a  stem cell that plays an important role in helping replace or repair damaged neurons, or nerve cells, in the brain. The researchers exposed the cells to the Zika virus and found that it infected the cells, causing some of the cells to die, and also limited the ability of the cells to proliferate.

In an interview in Healthday, Sujan Shresta, a researcher at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology and one of the lead authors of the study, says although their work was done in adult mice, it may have implications for people:

“Zika can clearly enter the brains of adults and can wreak havoc. But it’s a complex disease, it’s catastrophic for early brain development, yet the majority of adults who are infected with Zika rarely show detectable symptoms. Its effect on the adult brain may be more subtle and now we know what to look for.”

Move over CRISPR, there’s a new gene-editing tool in town

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Jennifer Lopez: Photo courtesy MTV

For much of the last year the hottest topic in stem cell and gene editing research has been CRISPR and the ease with which it can be used to edit genes. It’s so hot that apparently it’s the title of an upcoming TV show starring Jeniffer Lopez.

But hold on J-Lo, a new study in Nature Communications says by the time the show is on the air it may be old hat. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon and Yale University have developed a new gene-editing system, one they claim is easier to use and more accurate than CRISPR. And to prove it, they say they have successfully cured a genetic blood disorder in mice, using a simple IV approach.

Tools like CRISPR use enzymes to cut open sections of DNA to edit a specific gene. It’s like using a pair of scissors to cut a piece of string that has a big knot in the middle; you cut out the knot then join the ends of the string together. The problem with CRISPR is that the enzymes it uses are quite large and hard to use in a living animal – let alone a human – so they have to remove the target cells from the body and do the editing in the lab. Another problem is that CRISPR sometimes cuts sections of DNA that the researchers don’t want cut and could lead to dangerous side effects.

Greater precision

The Carnegie Mellon/Yale team say their new method avoids both problems. They use nanoparticles that contain molecules made from peptide nucleic acid (PNA), a kind of artificial form of DNA. This PNA is engineered to be able to cut open DNA and bind to a specific target without cutting anything else.

The team used this approach to target the mutated gene in beta thalassemia, a blood disorder that can be fatal if left untreated. The therapy binds to the malfunctioning gene, enabling the body’s own DNA repair system to correct the problem.

In a news story in Science Daily Danith Ly, one of the lead authors on the study, says even though the technique was successful in editing the target genes just 7 percent of the time, that is way more than the 0.1 percent rate most other gene editing tools achieve.

“The effect may only be 7 percent, but that’s curative. In the case of this particular disease model, you don’t need a lot of correction. You don’t need 100 percent to see the phenotype return to normal.”

Hormone that controls if and when fat cells mature

Obesity is one of the fastest growing public health problems in the US and globally. Understanding the mechanisms behind how that happens could be key to finding ways to address it. Now researchers at Stanford University think they may have uncovered an important part of the answer.

Their findings, reported in Science Signaling, show that mature fat cells produce a hormone called Adamts1 which acts like a switch for surrounding stem cells, determining if they change into fat-storing cells.   People who eat a high-fat diet experience a change in their Adamst1 production, and that triggers the nearby stem cells to specialize and start storing fat.

There are still a lot of questions to be answered about Adamst1, including whether it acts alone or in conjunction with other as yet unknown hormones. But in an article in Health Canal, Brian Feldman, the senior author of the study, says they can now start looking at potential use of Adamst1 to fight obesity.

“That won’t be a simple answer. If you block fat formation, extra calories have to go somewhere in the body, and sending them somewhere else outside fat cells could be more detrimental to metabolism. We know from other researchers’ work that liver and muscle are both bad places to store fat, for example. We do think there are going to be opportunities for new treatments based on our discoveries, but not by simply blocking fat formation alone.”