Project description:BACKGROUND: Cell-based regeneration therapies hold great promise and potential for new area in clinical medicine, although some obstacles still remain to be overcome for a wide range of clinical applications. One of the major impediments in this field is difficulties in large-scale production of cells of interest with reproducibility. Current protocol of cell therapy requires a long-time laborious manual process. To solve this problem, we focused on the robotics of automated and high throughput cell culture system. To date, an automated robotic cultivation of stem or progenitor cells in clinical trials has not been reported. METHODS: The system, AutoCulture®, used in this study can automatically replace the medium, centrifuge cells, split the cells, and take a photograph for their morphology. We examined the feasibility to use it in the clinical field by comparing the growth rate and the characteristics of cardiac stem cells (CSCs) cultivated by AutoCulture and the manual handling culture, which protocol is the exact same as current performing clinical trial in our institute. RESULTS: We demonstrated similar characteristics in both culture methods, in terms of growth rates, gene expression profiles, cell surface profiles by FACS, carbon hydrate structures on the cell surface, and genomic DNA stability. IMPLICATIONS: The results of this study showed that AutoCulture is feasible to cultivate human cells for regenerative medicine. An automated cell-processing machine for cell therapy will play more important role, as it will be widespread from multi-center trials to off-the-shelf cell products. The cells were cultured by manual handling or by the automatic cell culture apparatus. Total RNA was extracted from these cells at day 7 by the RNeasy Plus Mini Kit (QIAGEN). Gene expression analysis was performed using the Agilent Whole Human Genome Microarray chips G4112F (Agilent). Raw data were normalized and analyzed by GeneSpring GX11 software.
Project description:BACKGROUND: Cell-based regeneration therapies hold great promise and potential for new area in clinical medicine, although some obstacles still remain to be overcome for a wide range of clinical applications. One of the major impediments in this field is difficulties in large-scale production of cells of interest with reproducibility. Current protocol of cell therapy requires a long-time laborious manual process. To solve this problem, we focused on the robotics of automated and high throughput cell culture system. To date, an automated robotic cultivation of stem or progenitor cells in clinical trials has not been reported. METHODS: The system, AutoCulture®, used in this study can automatically replace the medium, centrifuge cells, split the cells, and take a photograph for their morphology. We examined the feasibility to use it in the clinical field by comparing the growth rate and the characteristics of cardiac stem cells (CSCs) cultivated by AutoCulture and the manual handling culture, which protocol is the exact same as current performing clinical trial in our institute. RESULTS: We demonstrated similar characteristics in both culture methods, in terms of growth rates, gene expression profiles, cell surface profiles by FACS, carbon hydrate structures on the cell surface, and genomic DNA stability. IMPLICATIONS: The results of this study showed that AutoCulture is feasible to cultivate human cells for regenerative medicine. An automated cell-processing machine for cell therapy will play more important role, as it will be widespread from multi-center trials to off-the-shelf cell products.
Project description:Comparative transcriptomic analysis of human epicardial progenitor cells and hiPSC-derived cardiac progenitor cells under hypoxic and normoxic culture conditions
Project description:The new use of automated tools in assisted reproductive techniques rises the concern of a posible detrimental effect on development. In the current study there are no meaningful differences between the transcriptomes of bovine blastocysts produced in vitro following manual or automatic denudation of the presumptive zygotes after in vitro fertilization.
Project description:Efficient generation of functional cardiomyocytes from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC-CMs) is critical for their use in regenerative medicine and other applications. In this study, we evaluated the effect of space microgravity (µg) on the differentiation of hiPSC-derived cardiac progenitors compared with parallel 1g condition on the International Space Station. Cryopreserved 3D cardiac progenitors derived from hiPSCs were cultured for 3 weeks. Compared with 1g culture, the µg culture had larger sphere sizes, increased expression of proliferation markers, higher counts of nuclei, and higher cell viability. Highly enriched cardiomyocytes generated in µg had appropriate gene expression and cardiac structure as well as improved function including contractility and Ca2+ handling. RNA-seq analysis of 3-day cultures revealed that short-term exposure of cardiac progenitor spheres to space microgravity upregulated genes involved in cell proliferation, cardiac differentiation, and contraction. These results indicate that space microgravity increased survival and proliferation of hiPSC-CMs and improved their structures and functions.
Project description:Transcription profiling by array of human mesenchymal stem cells in 2D culture compared with two different alginate-based 3D scaffolds