Novel strategy to improve hepatocyte differentiation stability through synchronized behavior-driven mechanical memory of iPSCs

Stable and efficient generation of functional iPSC-derived neural progenitor cell rosettes through regulation of collective cell-cell behavior

Although the potential of stem cells to differentiate into several cell types has shown promise in regenerative medicine, low differentiation efficiency and poor reproducibility significantly limit their practical application. We developed an effective and robust differentiation strategy for the efficient and robust generation of neural progenitor cell rosettes from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) incorporating botulinum hemagglutinin (HA). Treatment with HA suppressed the spontaneous differentiation of iPSCs cultured under undirected differentiation conditions, resulting in the preservation of their pluripotency. Moreover, treatment with HA during neural progenitor differentiation combined with dual SMAD inhibition generated a highly homogeneous population of PAX6-and SOX1-expressing neural progenitor cells with 8.4-fold higher yields of neural progenitor cells than untreated control cultures. These neural progenitor cells formed radially organized rosettes surrounding the central lumen. This differentiation method enhanced the generation of functional iPSC-derived neural progenitor cell rosettes throughout the culture vessel, suggesting that the regulation of collective cell-cell behavior using HA plays a morphogenetically important role in rosette formation and maturation. These findings show the significance of HA in the suppression of spontaneous differentiation through spatial homogeneity. The study proposes a novel methodology for the efficient derivation of functional iPSC-derived neural progenitor cell rosettes.

A simple tool for the synchronous differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells into pancreatic progenitors

Efficient differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) into functional pancreatic cells holds great promise for diabetes research and treatment. However, a robust culture strategy for producing pancreatic progenitors with high homogeneity is lacking. Here, we established a simple differentiation strategy for generating synchronous iPSC-derived pancreatic progenitors via a two-step method of sequential cell synchronization using botulinum hemagglutinin (HA), an E-cadherin function-blocking agent. Of the various methods tested, the first-step synchronization method with HA exposure induces a synchronous switch from E- to N-cadherin and N- to E-cadherin expression by spatially controlling heterogeneous cell distribution, subsequently improving their competency for directed differentiation into definitive endodermal cells from iPSCs. The iPSC-derived definitive endodermal cells can efficiently generate PDX1+ and NKX6.1+ pancreatic progenitor cells in high yields. The PDX1+ and PDX1+ /NKX6.1+ cell densities showed 1.6- and 2.2-fold increases, respectively, compared with those from unsynchronized cultures. The intra-run and inter-run coefficient of variation were below 10%, indicating stable and robust differentiation across different cultures and runs. Our approach is a simple and efficient strategy to produce large quantities of differentiated cells with the highest homogeneity during multistage pancreatic progenitor differentiation, providing a potential tool for guided differentiation of iPSCs to functional insulin-producing cells.