Single-Cell Microwell Platform Reveals Circulating Neural Cells as a Clinical Indicator for Patients with Blood-Brain Barrier Breakdown

Selecting Monoclonal Cell Lineages from Somatic Reprogramming Using Robotic-Based Spatial-Restricting Structured Flow

Somatic cell reprogramming generates induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which serve as a crucial source of seed cells for personalized disease modeling and treatment in regenerative medicine. However, the process of reprogramming often causes substantial lineage manipulations, thereby increasing cellular heterogeneity. As a consequence, the process of harvesting monoclonal iPSCs is labor-intensive and leads to decreased reproducibility. Here, we report the first in-house developed robotic platform that uses a pin-tip-based micro-structure to manipulate radial shear flow for automated monoclonal iPSC colony selection (~1 s) in a non-invasive and label-free manner, which includes tasks for somatic cell reprogramming culturing, medium changes; time-lapse-based high-content imaging; and iPSCs monoclonal colony detection, selection, and expansion. Throughput-wise, this automated robotic system can perform approximately 24 somatic cell reprogramming tasks within 50 days in parallel via a scheduling program. Moreover, thanks to a dual flow-based iPSC selection process, the purity of iPSCs was enhanced, while simultaneously eliminating the need for single-cell subcloning. These iPSCs generated via the dual processing robotic approach demonstrated a purity 3.7 times greater than that of the conventional manual methods. In addition, the automatically produced human iPSCs exhibited typical pluripotent transcriptional profiles, differentiation potential, and karyotypes. In conclusion, this robotic method could offer a promising solution for the automated isolation or purification of lineage-specific cells derived from iPSCs, thereby accelerating the development of personalized medicines.

Terahertz Photons Improve Cognitive Functions in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious psychosis leading to cognitive impairment. To restore cognitive functions for patients, the main treatments are based on medication or rehabilitation training but with limited effectiveness and strong side effects. Here, we demonstrate a new treatment approach for PTSD by using terahertz (THz) photons stimulating the hippocampal CA3 subregion. We verified that this method can nonthermally restore cognitive function in PTSD rats in vivo. After THz photon irradiation, the PTSD rats' recognitive index improved by about 10% in a novel object recognition test, the PTSD rats' accuracy improved by about 100% in a shuttler box test, the PTSD rats' numbers to identify target box was about 5 times lower in a Barnes maze test, and the rate of staying in new arm increased by approximately 40% in a Y-maze test. Further experimental studies found that THz photon (34.5 THz) irradiation could improve the expression of NR2B (increased by nearly 40%) and phosphorylated NR2B (increased by about 50%). In addition, molecular dynamics simulations showed that THz photons at a frequency of 34.5 THz are mainly absorbed by the pocket of glutamate receptors rather than by glutamate molecules. Moreover, the binding between glutamate receptors and glutamate molecules was increased by THz photons. This study offers a nondrug, nonthermal approach to regulate the binding between the excitatory neurotransmitter (glutamate) and NR2B. By increasing synaptic plasticity, it effectively improves the cognitive function of animals with PTSD, providing a promising treatment strategy for NR2B-related cognitive disorders.

Fluid biomarkers in stroke: From animal models to clinical care

Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Stroke prevention, early diagnosis, and efficient acute treatment are priorities to successfully impact stroke death and disability. Fluid biomarkers may improve stroke differential diagnostic, patient stratification for acute treatment, and post-stroke individualized rehabilitation. In the present work, we characterized the use of stroke animal models in fluid biomarker research through a systematic review of PubMed and Scopus databases, followed by a literature review on the translation to the human stroke care setting and future perspectives in the field. We found increasing numbers of publications but with limited translation to the clinic. Animal studies are very heterogeneous, do not account for several human features present in stroke, and, importantly, only a minority of such studies used human cohorts to validate biomarker findings. Clinical studies have found appealing candidates, both protein and circulating nucleic acids, to contribute to a more personalized stroke care pathway. Still, brain tissue complexity and the fact that different brain pathologies share lesion biomarkers make this task challenging due to biomarker low specificity. Moreover, the study design and lack of validation cohorts may have precluded a formal integration of biomarkers in different steps of stroke diagnosis and treatment. To overcome such issues, recent pivotal studies on biomarker dynamics in individual patients are providing added value to diagnosis and anticipating patients' early prognosis. Presently, the most consistent protein biomarkers for stroke diagnosis and short- and long-term prognosis are associated with tissue damage at neuronal (TAU), axonal (NFL), or astroglial (GFAP and S100β) levels. Most promising nucleic acids are microRNAs (miR), due to their stability in plasma and ease of access. Still, clinical validation and standardized quantitation place them a step behind compared protein as stroke biomarkers. Ultimately, the definition of clinically relevant biomarker panels and optimization of fast and sensitive biomarker measurements in the blood, together with their combination with clinical and neuroimaging data, will pave the way toward personalized stroke care.