An Integrated Miniature Bioprocessing for Personalized Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Expansion and Differentiation into Neural Stem Cells

Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are ideal cell sources for personalized cell therapies since they can be expanded to generate large numbers of cells and differentiated into presumably all the cell types of the human body in vitro. In addition, patient specific iPSC-derived cells induce minimal or no immune response in vivo. However, with current cell culture technologies and bioprocessing, the cost for biomanufacturing clinical-grade patient specific iPSCs and their derivatives are very high and not affordable for majority of patients. In this paper, we explored the use of closed and miniature cell culture device for biomanufacturing patient specific neural stem cells (NSCs) from iPSCs. We demonstrated that, with the assist of a thermoreversible hydrogel scaffold, the bioprocessing including iPSC expansion, iPSC differentiation into NSCs, the subsequent depletion of undifferentiated iPSCs from the NSCs, and concentrating and transporting the purified NSCs to the surgery room, could be integrated and completed within two closed 15 ml conical tubes.

Developing neural stem cell-based treatments for neurodegenerative diseases

Owing to the aging of the population, our society now faces an impending wave of age-related neurodegenerative pathologies, the most significant of which is Alzheimer’s disease. Currently, no effective therapies for Alzheimer’s disease have been developed. However, recent advances in the fields of neural stem cells and human induced pluripotent stem cells now provide us with the first real hope for a cure. The recent discovery by Blurton-Jones and colleagues that neural stem cells can effectively deliver disease-modifying therapeutic proteins throughout the brains of our best rodent models of Alzheimer’s disease, combined with recent advances in human nuclear reprogramming, stem cell research, and highly customized genetic engineering, may represent a potentially revolutionary personalized cellular therapeutic approach capable of effectively curing, ameliorating, and/or slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.