A bioengineered niche promotes in vivo engraftment and maturation of pluripotent stem cell derived human lung organoids
Abstract
Human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) derived tissues often remain developmentally immature in vitro, and become more adult-like in their structure, cellular diversity and function following transplantation into immunocompromised mice. Previously we have demonstrated that hPSC-derived human lung organoids (HLOs) resembled human fetal lung tissue in vitro (Dye et al. 2015). Here we show that HLOs required a bioartificial microporous Poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLG) scaffold niche for successful engraftment, long-term survival, and maturation of lung epithelium in vivo. Analysis of scaffold-grown transplanted tissue showed airway-like tissue with enhanced epithelial structure and organization compared to HLOs grown in vitro. By further comparing in vitro and in vivo grown HLOs with fetal and adult human lung tissue, we found that in vivo transplanted HLOs had improved cellular differentiation of secretory lineages that is reflective of differences between fetal and adult tissue, resulting in airway-like structures that were remarkably similar to the native adult human lung.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (RO1 HL119215)
- Jason R Spence
Unviersity of Michigan Cellular and Molecular Biology training grant (T32 GM007315)
- Alyssa J Miller
University of Michigan Tissue Engineering and Regeneration Training Grant (DE00007057)
- Alyssa J Miller
University of Michigan Rackham Graduate Fellowship
- Briana R Dye
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All work using human pluripotent stem cells was approved by the University of Michigan Human Pluiripotent Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee (HPSCRO, application #1054). All human tissue used in this work was falls under NIH Exemption 4. The tissue was not obtained from living individuals, and was de-identified. Since this work falls under NIH Exemption 4, it was given a "not regulated" status by the University of Michigan IRB (protocol # HUM00093465 and HUM00105750). All animal experiments were approved by the University of Michigan Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC; protocol # PRO00006609).
Copyright
© 2016, Dye et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 7,165
- views
-
- 1,587
- downloads
-
- 158
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
Transplanting bioengineered human lung organoids into mice could lead to a humanized model for pre-clinical studies of lung disease.
-
- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
- Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) have great potential to be used as alternatives to embryonic stem cells (hESCs) in regenerative medicine and disease modelling. In this study, we characterise the proteomes of multiple hiPSC and hESC lines derived from independent donors and find that while they express a near-identical set of proteins, they show consistent quantitative differences in the abundance of a subset of proteins. hiPSCs have increased total protein content, while maintaining a comparable cell cycle profile to hESCs, with increased abundance of cytoplasmic and mitochondrial proteins required to sustain high growth rates, including nutrient transporters and metabolic proteins. Prominent changes detected in proteins involved in mitochondrial metabolism correlated with enhanced mitochondrial potential, shown using high-resolution respirometry. hiPSCs also produced higher levels of secreted proteins, including growth factors and proteins involved in the inhibition of the immune system. The data indicate that reprogramming of fibroblasts to hiPSCs produces important differences in cytoplasmic and mitochondrial proteins compared to hESCs, with consequences affecting growth and metabolism. This study improves our understanding of the molecular differences between hiPSCs and hESCs, with implications for potential risks and benefits for their use in future disease modelling and therapeutic applications.