Not all induced pluripotent stem cells are made equal: McMaster researchers

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

3-Dec-2014

Contact: Veronica McGuire vmcguir@mcmaster.ca 90-552-591-402-2169 McMaster University @mcmasteru

Hamilton, ON (Dec. 3, 2014) - Scientists at McMaster University have discovered that human stem cells made from adult donor cells "remember" where they came from and that's what they prefer to become again.

This means the type of cell obtained from an individual patient to make pluripotent stem cells, determines what can be best done with them. For example, to repair the lung of a patient with lung disease, it is best to start off with a lung cell to make the therapeutic stem cells to treat the disease, or a breast cell for the regeneration of tissue for breast cancer patients.

Pluripotency is the ability stem cells have to turn into any one of the 226 cell types that make up the human body.The work challenges the previously accepted thought that any pluripotent human stem cell could be used to similarly to generate the same amount of mature tissue cells.

This finding, published today in the prestigious science journal Nature Communications, will be used to further drug development at McMaster, and potentially improve transplants using human stem cell sources.

The study was led by Mick Bhatia, director of the McMaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Human Stem Cell Biology and he is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine.

"It's like the stem cell we make wants to become a doctor like its grandpa or an artist like its great-grandma," said Bhatia.

"We've shown that human induced pluripotent stem cells, called iPSCs, have a memory that is engraved at the molecular/genetic level of the cell type used to make them, which increases their ability to differentiate to the parent tissue type after being put in various stem cell states.

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Not all induced pluripotent stem cells are made equal: McMaster researchers