Stem cells and regenerative medicine have made a new breakthrough in the clinic!

The Chinese Academy of Sciences team used 7 factors to replace the traditional 4 factors (OKSM) to develop a new and efficient reprogramming method, which can shorten the cell therapy process and accelerate the advancement of stem cells and regenerative medicine to the clinic.

Pei Duanqing

stem cell:

The "stem" of stem cells means "trunk" and "origin." This means that stem cells are like a tree trunk that can grow branches, leaves, flowers and fruit.

Therefore, the scientific community defines stem cells as follows: a primitive cell with self-renewal ability and multi-directional differentiation potential, which is the origin cell of the body. Under certain conditions, it can differentiate into a variety of functional cells or tissues and organs, which the medical community calls it "Universal Cell".

Stem cell therapy is a revolutionary advanced clinical treatment technology in regenerative medicine. This technology does not use stem cells themselves to treat diseases, but after stem cells are transplanted into the human body, on the one hand, they rely on many repair factors or immune regulators secreted by them to treat diseases, and on the other hand, they rely on stem cells to activate internal organs under specific conditions. Derived stem cells can differentiate into tissue and organ cells to replace their dead cells, and fundamentally treat diseases safely and effectively.

stem cell

In order to unlock the secrets of cell "transformation" and advance clinical applications, scientists have developed different reprogramming systems. It turns out that eukaryotic cells fold genomic DNA and histone proteins into chromatin at different levels, and the closed or open state of chromatin is closely related to the reading of precise information related to cell fate decision. The research team found that the chromatin state changes during somatic cell reprogramming follow certain rules.

Precisely following the dynamic changes of chromatin in the process of reprogramming, from the perspective of on and off, combined with gene expression profiling, Pei Duanqing's team developed a new type of high-efficiency reprogramming factor mixture composed of 7 factors (7F). The reprogramming efficiency of traditional OKSM has been increased from less than 0.1% to about 10%; this method is like upgrading the mobile communication signal from "4G" to "5G", providing high-quality cell sources and new products for regenerative medicine and the mechanism research of induced pluripotent stem cells. cell model.

This study revealed that the combination of reprogramming factors designed to follow the dynamic changes of chromatin plays an important role in determining the characteristics of iPSCs, which is conducive to the rapid acquisition of high-quality iPSCs and provides more options for further revealing the reprogramming mechanism. At the same time, the short-term and rapid acquisition of high-quality iPSCs can shorten the cell therapy process and accelerate the advancement of stem cells and regenerative medicine to the clinic.