Induced pluripotent stem cells reprogrammed from human skin (California Institute for Regenerative Medicine)
4 August 2015. An automated system now uses robotics instead of manual lab handling to convert skin samples from individuals into stem cells that can transform into any other cells in the body, for regenerative medicine, drug development, and research. The system, developed at New York Stem Cell Foundation, or NYSCF, is described in yesterday’s issue of the journal Nature Methods (paid subscription required).
The system, called NYSCF Global Stem Cell Array, results from a collaboration between NYSCF in New York City and researchers from Harvard University, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, National Institutes of Health, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Inova Health System in Falls Church, Virginia. The team developed the system to replace the laborious, inconsistent, and time-consuming lab culturing methods used today with a faster standardized process yielding more consistent results.
NYSCF Global Stem Cell Array is designed to produce induced pluripotent stem cells, adult stem cells genetically reprogrammed to a similar state as embryonic stem cells, expressing genes and factors that enable them to grow and transform into various cells in the body. The system combines robotics with high-throughput analytics to standardize handling of reprogramming skin samples into induced pluripotent stem cells, then into differentiated cells.
While stem cells are becoming vital tools for regenerative medicine, they also have increasing value for drug discovery, development, and testing. An immediate use of the NYSCF system is to produce stem cells for testing the potency and safety of drugs for individuals, which helps advance the practice of precision medicine.
Another objective of the system is to produce larger populations of stem cells for research. “This is not an artisanal pursuit,” says founder and CEO Susan Solomon in an NYSCF statement. “Researchers need to look at genetically diverse populations at scale, which means creating large numbers of standardized, human pluripotent stem cells.”
In the journal article, the researchers analyzed 600 skin samples from patients with neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, and mental health conditions, as well as individuals with undiagnosed diseases, and no known diseases. NYSCF Global Stem Cell Array produced large numbers of consistent stem cells that the researchers could match with and draw conclusions from genomic analyses, which would not be possible with manual stem cell production or even current automated methods to generate single stem cell lines.
Applying the NYSCF Global Stem Cell Array to drug development can also have significant benefits, say the authors, to anticipate the way people from diverse backgrounds respond to new therapies, by identifying metabolic and toxicity issues in human rather than animal cells before testing on human subjects. “This has the potential to save billions of dollars in drug development,” notes Solomon, “and limit the dangers to people participating in those clinical trials, dramatically reducing the amount of time currently spent on human clinical trials.”
Read more:
- Stem Cells Treat Vision Disorders in Animal Tests
- Stem Cell Biotech Gains $44M in First Venture Round
- Biotechs Partner on Cancer Stem Cell-Gene Therapies
- Stem Cells Shown to Stop Decline for Some ALS Patients
- Heart-on-Chip Device Built to Screen Drugs
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