Chemical reprogramming of human blood cells

Subjects

In a study published in Cell Stem Cell, Deng and colleagues achieved the reprogramming of human blood cells to pluripotent stem cells using small molecules.

The authors tested reprogramming conditions on isolated mononuclear cells from the human cord blood that were expanded in well-established erythroid progenitor cell (EPC) conditions. They used small molecules that target major development-related pathways as well as compounds that inhibit enzymes associated with histone modifications to downregulate EPC-related genes. Treatment with late-stage reprogramming conditions and inhibition of the PRC2 complex (which increased reprogramming efficiency) resulted in proliferative cells that formed colonies that expressed pluripotency factors. A similar approach was applied to expanded EPCs isolated from adult human peripheral blood, demonstrating that the authors had developed a robust protocol to obtain hCiPS cells from two sources of blood cells.

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