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Chen ZY, Ji SJ, Huang CW, Tu WZ, Ren XY, Guo R, Xie X. In situ reprogramming of cardiac fibroblasts into cardiomyocytes in mouse heart with chemicals. Acta Pharmacol Sin 2024:10.1038/s41401-024-01308-6. [PMID: 38890526 DOI: 10.1038/s41401-024-01308-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/05/2024] [Accepted: 05/07/2024] [Indexed: 06/20/2024] Open
Abstract
Cardiomyocytes are terminal differentiated cells and have limited ability to proliferate or regenerate. Condition like myocardial infarction causes massive death of cardiomyocytes and is the leading cause of death. Previous studies have demonstrated that cardiac fibroblasts can be induced to transdifferentiate into cardiomyocytes in vitro and in vivo by forced expression of cardiac transcription factors and microRNAs. Our previous study have demonstrated that full chemical cocktails could also induce fibroblast to cardiomyocyte transdifferentiation both in vitro and in vivo. With the development of tissue clearing techniques, it is possible to visualize the reprogramming at the whole-organ level. In this study, we investigated the effect of the chemical cocktail CRFVPTM in inducing in situ fibroblast to cardiomyocyte transdifferentiation with two strains of genetic tracing mice, and the reprogramming was observed at whole-heart level with CUBIC tissue clearing technique and 3D imaging. In addition, single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) confirmed the generation of cardiomyocytes from cardiac fibroblasts which carries the tracing marker. Our study confirms the use of small molecule cocktails in inducing in situ fibroblast to cardiomyocyte reprogramming at the whole-heart level and proof-of-conceptly providing a new source of naturally incorporated cardiomyocytes to help heart regeneration.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zi-Yang Chen
- State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, the National Center for Drug Screening, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201203, China
- School of Pharmacy, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
| | - Si-Jia Ji
- State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, the National Center for Drug Screening, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201203, China
- School of Pharmacy, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
- School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, 200031, China
| | - Chen-Wen Huang
- State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, the National Center for Drug Screening, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201203, China
| | - Wan-Zhi Tu
- State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, the National Center for Drug Screening, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201203, China
- School of Pharmacy, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
- School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, 200031, China
| | - Xin-Yue Ren
- State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, the National Center for Drug Screening, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201203, China
- School of Pharmacy, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
| | - Ren Guo
- State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, the National Center for Drug Screening, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201203, China
- Shandong Laboratory of Yantai Drug Discovery, Bohai Rim Advanced Research Institute for Drug Discovery, Yantai, 264119, China
| | - Xin Xie
- State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, the National Center for Drug Screening, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201203, China.
- School of Pharmacy, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
- School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, 200031, China.
- Shandong Laboratory of Yantai Drug Discovery, Bohai Rim Advanced Research Institute for Drug Discovery, Yantai, 264119, China.
- School of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology, Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hangzhou, 310024, China.
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Inhibition of Gap Junctional Intercellular Communication Upregulates Pluripotency Gene Expression in Endogenous Pluripotent Muse Cells. Cells 2022; 11:cells11172701. [PMID: 36078111 PMCID: PMC9455024 DOI: 10.3390/cells11172701] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/12/2022] [Revised: 08/19/2022] [Accepted: 08/22/2022] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Gap junctions (GJ) are suggested to support stem cell differentiation. The Muse cells that are applied in clinical trials are non-tumorigenic pluripotent-like endogenous stem cells, can be collected as stage-specific embryonic antigen 3 (SSEA-3+) positive cells from multiple tissues, and show triploblastic differentiation and self-renewability at a single cell level. They were reported to up-regulate pluripotency gene expression in suspension. We examined how GJ inhibition affected pluripotency gene expression in adherent cultured-Muse cells. Muse cells, mainly expressing gap junction alpha-1 protein (GJA1), reduced GJ intercellular communication from ~85% to 5–8% after 24 h incubation with 120 μM 18α-glycyrrhetinic acid, 400 nM 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate, and 90 μM dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, as confirmed by a dye-transfer assay. Following inhibition, NANOG, OCT3/4, and SOX2 were up-regulated 2–4.5 times more; other pluripotency-related genes, such as KLF4, CBX7, and SPRY2 were elevated; lineage-specific differentiation-related genes were down-regulated in quantitative-PCR and RNA-sequencing. Connexin43-siRNA introduction also confirmed the up-regulation of NANOG, OCT3/4, and SOX2. YAP, a co-transcriptional factor in the Hippo signaling pathway that regulates pluripotency gene expression, co-localized with GJA1 (also known as Cx43) in the cell membrane and was translocated to the nucleus after GJ inhibition. Adherent culture is usually more suitable for the stable expansion of cells than is a suspension culture. GJ inhibition is suggested to be a simple method to up-regulate pluripotency in an adherent culture that involves a Cx43-YAP axis in pluripotent stem cells, such as Muse cells.
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