Stem cells identical to natural ones

The research of Novosibirsk scientists opens up new opportunities for the development of cellular medicine

Press service of the FIT Institute of Cytology and Genetics SB RAS

Regenerative cellular medicine is one of the youngest, but at the same time, promising areas of medical science development. In theory, everything looks like this. First, pluripotent stem cells are obtained from the patient's cells (for example, skin cells), they are also called induced. And then they differentiate them, that is, they get cells of a given type from them. As a result, it will be possible to create the necessary donor organs from the patient's own material, as well as replace the affected tissues.

Thus, it will be possible to solve the problems of both the engraftment of the transplanted organ and the expectation of suitable donor material.

Scientists agree that the development of this technology is capable of revolutionizing the treatment process, but this will be preceded by a huge research work, which dozens of scientific groups around the world are currently engaged in. In Russia, the situation with cellular medicine is not easy.

There are few collectives fundamentally dealing with this problem. One of them works on the basis of the Laboratory of Epigenetics of development of the FIT Institute of Cytology and Genetics SB RAS (although it includes employees of other institutes of Akademgorodok) under the leadership of Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor Suren Minasovich Zakiyan.

– Modern science has already reached the stage when the stages of this process can be implemented in practice, – says one of the group members, Ph.D. Dmitry Shtokalo (Institute of Computer Science Systems SB RAS named after A.P. Ershov). – However, errors accumulate at each of the steps, so it is not yet possible to use this technology completely in practice.

To eliminate these errors, a thorough study of induced pluripotent cells and the processes of their differentiation into relevant cell types is necessary. This is what they are currently doing in the group under the leadership of Candidate of Biological Sciences Sergey Medvedev. The work on this project is carried out with the support of the Russian Science Foundation.

– We studied the effect of microRNAs on how the process of cell transformation into a pluripotent stem cell proceeds, – said another member of the group, PhD Vladimir Sherstyuk. – To do this, we took three groups of cells from the same rat line: differentiated cells extracted from skin tissue, embryonic stem cells (of natural origin) and induced pluripotent stem cells artificially created from fibroblasts. We isolated microRNAs from each of the groups and compared them. The results were very interesting.

The rat is a fairly popular and convenient object for medical research, models of various diseases are studied on it. But the mechanism of transformation of differentiated cells back into pluripotent cells has not been studied much, and this alone makes the work carried out by Novosibirsk scientists unique.

The results obtained during the study were published in one of the world's leading scientific journals – Scientific Reports. Firstly, they showed that stem cells obtained artificially have little difference in the microRNA profile from natural cells, which means that this technology can already be considered sufficiently reliable. And secondly, they were able to identify a number of other microRNAs also involved in this process, which were previously unknown to science.

– It is very possible that the errors associated with the poor–quality production of artificial stem cells were caused precisely by the fact that the work of these microRNAs was not taken into account during the process, - Dmitry Shtokalo suggests.

In any case, the results obtained by Novosibirsk scientists will help researchers to better understand the fundamental mechanism of cell transformation in the future, and thanks to this, create better material for work, differentiate these stem cells into the right tissues.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  05.07.2017