Scientists Use Chemical Cocktail In New Method to Induce Stem Cells
Despite its exciting potential, chemical induction of pluripotency (CIP) efficiency remains low and the mechanisms are poorly understood. Now, scientists at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health have been able to generate stem cells using a cocktail of two chemicals that can induce mature somatic cells to turn back into pluripotent stem cells.
Somatic cells are any cell of a living organism other than the reproductive cells, while stem cells can self-renew or multiply while maintaining the potential to develop into other types of cells. They can become cells of the blood, heart, bones, skin, muscle, brain or other body parts.
“The fate of cells is determined by the chromatin structure in the nucleus of cells,” said Liu Jing, a researcher at the university. “We use small molecular chemicals to reprogramme the somatic cells by manipulating the chromatin structure from the somatic cell pattern to stem cell pattern.”
They developed an efficient two-step serum- and replating-free chemical induction of pluripotency (CIP) protocol and the associated chromatin accessibility dynamics (CAD) by assay for transposase-accessible chromatin (ATAC)-seq. Using the chemicals, they were able to generate the
stem cells.CIP reorganizes the somatic genome to an intermediate state that is resolved under 2iL condition by re-closing previously opened loci prior to pluripotency acquisition with gradual opening of loci enriched with motifs for the OCT/SOX/KLF families.
Bromodeoxyuridine, a critical ingredient of CIP, is responsible for both closing and opening critical loci, at least in part by preventing the opening of loci enriched with motifs for the AP1 family and facilitating the opening of loci enriched with SOX/KLF/GATA motifs.
Soaking various somatic cells in the chemicals can induce them to become pluripotent stem cells, including the hepatic cell, which is difficult to reprogram by other methods, Liu concludes.
