Enhanced chimerism

Interspecific chimerism is a phenomenon of an organism consisting of tissue and genetic information of two different species. Currently, many studies are exploring the possibility of creating functional human cells, tissues or organs in the animal body from human pluripotent stem cells (hpSC) using interspecific chimerism to solve the problem of a shortage of tissues and organs for transplantation. However, hPSCs in chimeric embryos have an extremely low survival rate, so the technology is currently not very effective.

Research groups led by Professor Pan Guangjin and Professor Lai Liangxue from the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have made progress in interspecific chimerism. They improved hpSC and for the first time obtained functional human blood cells using this technology.

The researchers found that the rapid apoptosis of hpSC in chimeric embryos is mainly associated with the suppression of their growth by pluripotent stem cells of the host organism. The combination of the MYCN gene encoding the growth factor precursor protein and the anti-apoptotic BCL2 gene effectively overcame hpSC apoptosis and significantly improved their ability to integrate into preimplantation embryos of mice, rabbits and pigs.

MYCN+BCL2 markedly enhanced hpSC chimerism in mouse embryos, and the researchers were able to isolate living progenitor cells of human CD34+ blood cells from chimeras by cell sorting. The resulting CD34+ further gave rise to various subtypes of blood cells in vitro.

This work demonstrates the proof of concept of obtaining human cells using enhanced interspecific chimerism and lays the foundation for the creation of cells, tissues and organs for transplantation.

Article Y.Zhu et al. Generating functional cells through enhanced interspecies chimerism with human pluripotent stem cells is published in the journal Stem Cell Reports.

Aminat Adzhieva, portal "Eternal Youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru .