Gaggi Giulia, Di Credico Andrea, Guarnieri Simone, Mariggiò Maria Addolorata, Di Baldassarre Angela, Ghinassi Barbara
Department of Medicine and Sciences of Aging, Chieti, Italy.
Reprogramming and Cell Differentiation Lab, Center for Advanced Studies and Technology (CAST), Chieti, Italy.
Front Cell Dev Biol. 2022 Jul 22;10:936990. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2022.936990. eCollection 2022.
Human amniotic fluids stem cells (hAFSCs) can be easily isolated from the amniotic fluid during routinely scheduled amniocentesis. Unlike hiPSCs or hESC, they are neither tumorigenic nor immunogenic and their use does not rise ethical or safety issues: for these reasons they may represent a good candidate for the regenerative medicine. hAFSCs are generally considered multipotent and committed towards the mesodermal lineages; however, they express many pluripotent markers and share some epigenetic features with hiPSCs. Hence, we hypothesized that hAFSCs may overcome their mesodermal commitment differentiating into to ectodermal lineages. Here we demonstrated that by the sequential exposure to specific factors, hAFSCs can give rise to spinal motor neurons (MNs), as evidenced by the gradual gene and protein upregulation of early and late MN markers (PAX6, ISL1, HB9, NF-L, vAChT). When co-cultured with myotubes, hAFSCs-derived MNs were able to create functional neuromuscular junctions that induced robust skeletal muscle contractions. These data demonstrated the hAFSCs are not restricted to mesodermal commitment and can generate functional MNs thus outlining an ethically acceptable strategy for the study and treatment of the neurodegenerative diseases.
人羊水干细胞(hAFSCs)可在常规羊膜穿刺术期间轻松从羊水中分离出来。与诱导多能干细胞(hiPSCs)或人胚胎干细胞(hESC)不同,它们既无致瘤性也无免疫原性,其使用不会引发伦理或安全问题:基于这些原因,它们可能是再生医学的良好候选者。hAFSCs通常被认为是多能的,并倾向于中胚层谱系;然而,它们表达许多多能性标志物,并与hiPSCs共享一些表观遗传特征。因此,我们推测hAFSCs可能克服其向中胚层谱系的分化,分化为外胚层谱系。在这里,我们证明,通过依次暴露于特定因子,hAFSCs可以产生脊髓运动神经元(MNs),早期和晚期MN标志物(PAX6、ISL1、HB9、NF-L、vAChT)的基因和蛋白质逐渐上调证明了这一点。当与肌管共培养时,hAFSCs衍生的MNs能够形成功能性神经肌肉接头,诱导强大的骨骼肌收缩。这些数据表明,hAFSCs不限于中胚层谱系,能够产生功能性MNs,从而概述了一种研究和治疗神经退行性疾病的符合伦理的可接受策略。