Programming Stem Cells to Home to Specific Tissues Should Enable More Effective Cell-based Therapies

The inability to target stem cells to tissues of interest poses a significant barrier to effective cell therapy.

New research has developed a platform approach to chemically incorporate homing receptors onto the surface of stem cells. This approach has the potential to improve the efficacy of many types of stem cell therapies by increasing the concentrations of cells at target locations in the body.

To accomplish this, researchers engineered the surface of cells to include receptors that act as a homing device.

“The central hypothesis of our work is that the ability of cells to home to specific tissues can be enhanced, without otherwise altering cell function,” said Jeffrey M. Karp, PhD, co-director of the Regenerative Therapeutics Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital and faculty member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. “By knowing the ‘zip code’ of the blood vessels in specific tissues, we can program the ‘address’ onto the surface of the cells to potentially target them with high efficiencies.”

While conventional stem cell therapies that include local administration of cells can be useful, they are typically more invasive with limited potential for multiple doses.

“You can imagine, that when the targeted tissue is cardiac muscle, for example to treat heart attacks or heart failure, injecting the cells directly into the heart can be an invasive procedure and typically this approach can only be performed once,” said Dr. Karp.

Using the platform the researchers created, the cells are prepared to travel directly to the area of interest after being injected through a common and much less invasive intravenous infusion method.

“The necessity for a more effective delivery approach stems from the potential diseases cell therapy may address,” said Dr. Karp, noting that the approach can be used to systemically target bone producing cells to the bone marrow to treat osteoporosis, cardiomyocytes to the heart to treat ischemic tissue, neural stem cells to the brain to treat parkinson’s disease, or endothelial progenitor cells to sites of peripheral vascular disease to promote formation of new blood vessels.

The researchers concluded that, as the understanding of the mechanisms of cell trafficking grows, the ability to improve homing to specific tissues through engineered approaches should significantly enhance cell therapy by reducing the invasiveness of local administration, permitting repeat dosing, and potentially reducing the number of cells required to achieve a therapeutic effect.

Adapted from the Brignam and Women's Hospital announcement.