Production of Highly Uniform Midbrain Organoids from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells

Brain organoids have been considered as an advanced platform for in vitro disease modeling and drug screening, but numerous roadblocks exist, such as lack of large-scale production technology and lengthy protocols with multiple manipulation steps, impeding the industrial translation of brain organoid technology. Here, we describe the high-speed and large-scale production of midbrain organoids using a high-throughput screening-compatible platform within 30 days. Micro midbrain organoids (µMOs) exhibit a highly uniform morphology and gene expression pattern with minimal variability. Notably, µMOs show dramatically accelerated maturation, resulting in the generation of functional µMOs within only 30 days of differentiation. Furthermore, individual µMOs display highly consistent responsiveness to neurotoxin, suggesting their usefulness as an in vitro high-throughput drug toxicity screening platform. Collectively, our data indicate that µMO technology could represent an advanced and robust platform for in vitro disease modeling and drug screening for human neuronal diseases.

Suppressed expression of LDHB promotes age-related hearing loss via aerobic glycolysis

Age-dependent decrease of mitochondrial energy production and cellular redox imbalance play significant roles in age-related hearing loss (ARHL). Lactate dehydrogenase B (LDHB) is a key glycolytic enzyme that catalyzes the interconversion of pyruvate and lactate. LDH activity and isoenzyme patterns are known to be changed with aging, but the role of LDHB in ARHL has not been studied yet. Here, we found that LDHB knockout mice showed hearing loss at high frequencies, which is the typical feature of ARHL. LDHB knockdown caused downregulation of mitochondrial functions in auditory cell line, University of Bristol/organ of Corti 1 (UB/OC1) with decreased NAD⁺ and increased hypoxia inducing factor-1α. LDHB knockdown also enhanced the death of UB/OC1 cells with ototoxic gentamicin treatment. On the contrary, the induction of LDHB expression caused enhanced mitochondrial functions, including changes in mitochondrial respiratory subunits, mitochondrial membrane potentials, ATP, and the NAD⁺/NADH ratio. Thus, we concluded that suppression of LDHB activity may be closely related with the early onset or progression of ARHL.

Robust and Reproducible Generation of Induced Neural Stem Cells from Human Somatic Cells by Defined Factors

Background and Objectives

Recent studies have described direct reprogramming of mouse and human somatic cells into induced neural stem cells (iNSCs) using various combinations of transcription factors. Although iNSC technology holds a great potential for clinical applications, the low conversion efficiency and limited reproducibility of iNSC generation hinder its further translation into the clinic, strongly suggesting the necessity of highly reproducible method for human iNSCs (hiNSCs). Thus, in orderto develop a highly efficient and reproducible protocol for hiNSC generation, we revisited the reprogramming potentials of previously reported hiNSC reprogramming cocktails by comparing the reprogramming efficiency of distinct factor combinations including ours.

Methods

We introduced distinct factor combinations, OSKM (OCT4+SOX2+KLF4+C-MYC), OCT4 alone, SOX2 alone, SOX2+HMGA2, BRN4+SKM+SV40LT (BSKM^LT), SK^LT, SM^LT, and SKM^LT and performed comparative analysis of reprogramming potentials of distinct factor combinations in hiNSC generation.

Results

Here we show that ectopic expression of five reprogramming factors, BSKM^LT leads the robust hiNSC generation (>80 folds enhanced efficiency) from human somatic cells compared with previously described factor combinations. With our combination, we were able to observe hiNSC conversion within 7 days of transduction. Throughout further optimization steps, we found that both BRN4 and KLF4 are not essential for hiNSC conversion.

Conclusions

Our factor combination could robustly and reproducibly generate hiNSCs from human somatic cells with distinct origins. Therefore, our novel reprogramming strategy might serve as a useful tool for hiNSC-based clinical application.

Generation of homogeneous midbrain organoids with in vivo-like cellular composition facilitates neurotoxin-based Parkinson's disease modeling

Recent studies have demonstrated the generation of midbrain-like organoids (MOs) from human pluripotent stem cells. However, the low efficiency of MO generation and the relatively immature and heterogeneous structures of the MOs hinder the translation of these organoids from the bench to the clinic. Here we describe the robust generation of MOs with homogeneous distribution of midbrain dopaminergic (mDA) neurons. Our MOs contain not only mDA neurons but also other neuronal subtypes as well as functional glial cells, including astrocytes and oligodendrocytes. Furthermore, our MOs exhibit mDA neuron-specific cell death upon treatment with 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine, indicating that MOs could be a proper human model system for studying the in vivo pathology of Parkinson's disease (PD). Our optimized conditions for producing homogeneous and mature MOs might provide an advanced patient-specific platform for in vitro disease modeling as well as for drug screening for PD.

Modelling monogenic autism spectrum disorder using mouse cortical organoids

Variants of the contactin-associated protein-like 2 (CNTNAP2), which is a member of the neurexin family of proteins, function as cell adhesion molecules. The loss of CNTNAP2 function leads to autism spectrum disorder in humans and to autistic behaviours in mice. However, the functional effects of these mutations at the cellular level during fetal developmental periods remain elusive. Here, we studied mouse cortical organoids (mCOs) derived from Cntnap2^-/- (knockout, KO) mouse induced pluripotent stem cells (miPSCs). Our results showed that KO mCOs displayed inhibitory-neuron-specific defects. At the neural progenitor stage, the GABAergic-neurogenesis-governing transcriptional network was dysregulated in the absence of Cntnap2. Our findings suggest that, in the early fetal cortical development, the cell adhesion molecule Cntnap2 plays a crucial role in the regulation of the differentiation of GABAergic neurons in the organoid platform. The reduced number of GABAergic neurons was efficiently restored in KO mCOs by treatment with the antiepileptic drug retigabine, showing the effectiveness of Cntnap2 KO mCOs in the therapeutic targeting of ASD.

Induced neural stem cells from distinct genetic backgrounds exhibit different reprogramming status

Somatic cells could be directly converted into induced neural stem cells (iNSCs) by ectopic expression of defined transcription factors. However, the underlying mechanism of direct lineage transition into iNSCs is largely unknown. In this study, we examined the effect of genetic background on the direct conversion process into an iNSC state. The iNSCs from two different mouse strains exhibited the distinct efficiency of lineage conversion as well as clonal expansion. Furthermore, the expression levels of endogenous NSC markers, silencing of transgenes, and in vitro differentiation potential were also different between iNSC lines from different strains. Therefore, our data suggest that the genetic background of starting cells influences the conversion efficiency as well as reprogramming status of directly converted iNSCs.