Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPS cells) can mirror the defining defects of a genetic condition — in this instance, Marfan syndrome — as well as embryonic stem cells.
An immediate implication is that iPS cells could be used to examine the molecular aspects of Marfan on a personalized basis. Embryonic stem cells, on the other hand, can’t do this because their genetic contents are those of the donated embryo, not the patient’s.
“Our in vitro findings strongly point to the underlying mechanisms that may explain the clinical manifestations of Marfan syndrome,” said Michael Longaker, MD, professor of surgery and co-director of Stanford University’s Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. The study’s first author is Natalina Quarto, PhD, a senior research scientist in Longaker’s laboratory.
Marfan syndrome is an inherited connective-tissue disorder that occurs in one in 10,000 to one in 20,000 individuals. It is caused by any of a large number of defects in one gene. People with this condition tend to be very tall and thin and to suffer from osteopenia, or poor bone mineralization. Medical experts speculate that Abraham Lincoln, for example, suffered from this disorder. Marfan can also profoundly affect the eyes and cardiovascular system.
In this study, both iPS cells and embryonic stem cells carrying a mutation that causes Marfan syndrome showed impaired ability to form bone, and all too readily formed cartilage. These aberrations mirror the most prominent clinical manifestation of the disease.
Discovered in 2006, induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, are derived from fully differentiated tissues such as the skin. Yet they harbor the same capacity of embryonic stem cells to differentiate into all the tissues of the body as well as to replicate for indefinite periods in a dish. Because they offer an ethically uncomplicated alternative to embryonic stem cells, iPS cells have fueled the hope that they can replace ESCs in scientists’ efforts to analyze, in a dish, the cellular defects ultimately responsible for diseases ranging from diabetes to Parkinson’s and even such complex conditions as cardiovascular disease and autism.
One hope for iPS cells is to be able to differentiate them in a dish into tissues of interest — say, nerve cells of a patient with Parkinson’s or autism — and study these resulting cells’ characteristics with an eye to understanding the disease in a patient-specific way. This would be impossible to do with embryonic stem cells, unless ESCs from donated human eggs could be modified through the so-far insurmountable feat of substituting a patient’s own genetic material into these eggs to reflect the patient’s own genetic background.
While scientists have set the goal of using these cells for more than research purposes — developing therapeutic applications in regenerative medicine — that prospect is more distant. Scientists will have to develop the capacity first to repair within such cells, whether iPS or ESC, the genetic defects determined to be responsible for a patient’s condition, and then differentiate the cells in bulk into the affected tissue, which could be used for regenerative medicine. Again, iPS cells in theory might be a better bet because, being initially derived from a particular patient, they could differentiate into tissues that are less likely to provoke graft rejection than similar tissues produced using a donor embryo’s ESCs.
However, a number of studies have reported subtle differences between iPS cells and ESCs, implying that the two may not be equivalent. Experts have wondered whether these differences may render iPS cells inadequate substitutes for ESCs in modeling disease states. This study suggests otherwise, Longaker said.
Adapted from the Stanford School of Medicine announcement by Bruce Goldman.
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