Regenerative therapies with induced pluripotent stem cells

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are a type of stem cell with pluripotent characteristics. That is, they have the capacity to generate most of the tissues and cells of all adult cell types. They are obtained artificially from a cell that was initially not pluripotent.

Due to their promising potential in regenerative medicine, scientific research has focused on these cells

Umbilical cord blood is an easily accessible and valuable source for generating iPSCs because it contains a high level of stem cells with a lower immune response and fewer mutations in their DNA ¹ . They can be used for both research and clinical applications.

Without raising ethical issues

Pluripotent stem cells have been studied by the scientific community for years due to the great variety of cells they can generate. They can be used for a wide range of medical treatments.

Until 2008, the only way to obtain human pluripotent stem cells was from human embryos. This generated some controversy due to its ethical implications. However, in 2006 a team led by Japanese medical researcher Shinya Yamanaka succeeded in obtaining pluripotent stem cells from mouse fibroblasts. It was the first time this milestone had been achieved.

In 2008 Yamanaka's team succeeded in repeating the same procedure with human cells. This earned him the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2012

Currently, the protocol developed by Yamanaka's team allows iPSCs to be obtained from other cells, such as those from the umbilical cord ^1,2 .

regenerative potential

iPSCs cells are being applied in the study of human genetic diseases, as in vitro models of diseases to develop specific drugs. Also as a possible individual treatment in regenerative medicine or for basic research.

iPSCs have great potential in the regeneration of tissues and organs

Some teams of specialists have used them for different purposes in the field of regenerative medicine. One of the most notorious cases was that of the team of Japanese stem cell researcher Masayo Takahashi. In 2014, she and her team performed, for the first time, a transplant of cells obtained from iPSCs.

Successfully transplanted iPSC-derived pigment epithelial cells into a 70-year-old patient with untreatable eye disease ³

Cord blood to produce iPSCs

Umbilical cord blood has several advantages with great impact on the reprogramming efficiency and the quality of the resulting iPSCs. First, cord blood stem cells have a greater capacity for proliferation than other cell sources ^4,5 .

Second, they show less immune rejection due to immunological immaturity ⁶ . They have also accumulated fewer nuclear and mitochondrial mutations, which are probably present in adult cells ⁷ .

Easily obtained without invasive protocols, cord blood stem cell reprogramming offers an unprecedented opportunity to address previously untreated therapeutic ^needs .

REFERENCES:

Hyebin Koh et al. Generation and characterization of human umbilical cord blood-derived induced pluripotent stem cells. Stem Cell Research 60(2022) 102674.
2. Wang, J et al. Generation of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells with High Efficiency from Human Umbilical Cord Blood Mononuclear Cells. Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics. Volume 11, Issue 5, October 2013, Pages 304-311.
3. Seiji Takagi, Masayo Takahashi et al. Evaluation of Transplanted Autologous Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Retinal Pigment Epithelium in Exudative Age-Related Macular Degeneration. Ophthalmol Retina 2019 Oct;3(10):850-859. doi: 10.1016/j.oret.2019.04.021. Epub 2019 Apr 26).
4. Rim YA, Nam Y, Ju JH, 2019. Application of cord blood and cord blood-derived induced pluripotent stem cells for cartilage regeneration. Cell Transplant. 28(5), 529–537.
5. Theunissen K, Verfaillie CM, 2005. A multifactorial analysis of umbilical cord blood, adult bone marrow and mobilized peripheral blood progenitors using the improved ML-IC assay. Exp. Hematol. 33(2), 165–172.
6. Medhekar, SK, Shende, VS, Chincholkar, AB, 2016. Recent stem cell advances: cord blood and induced pluripotent stem cell for cardiac regeneration- a review. Int. J. Stem Cells 9(1), 21–30.
7. Raab S, Klingenstein M, Liebau S, Linta L. A comparative view on human somatic cell sources for iPSC generation. Stem Cells Int. 2014, 1–12.