Project description:Background: Congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV) is a common intrauterine infection, leading to neurodevelopmental disabilities. Early prognostic assessment of the severity of cCMV has remained an ongoing challenge. We aimed to identify amniotic fluid biomarkers of the severity of cCMV-related fetal brain injury. Methods: Global proteome analysis was performed in mid-gestation amniotic fluid samples, comparing fetuses with severe cCMV to asymptomatic CMV-infected fetuses (the discovery cohort). The levels of selected differentially-excreted proteins were further determined by specific immunoassays, and evaluated in an independent validation cohort, including clinically-blinded amniotic fluid of CMV-infected fetuses from unrelated centers. Findings: Proteome analysis identified 29 amniotic fluid proteins with distinct abundance in fetuses with severe-, compared to asymptomatic, cCMV. Pathway analysis of the differentially-excreted proteins revealed enriched pathways of inflammatory response, cellular compromise, immunological disease, organismal injury, and neurological disease, underlining a link between excessive inflammation at the maternal-fetal interface and the development of cCMV-related fetal brain damage. Importantly, the levels of two of these proteins, chemerin and galectin-3-binding protein (Gal-3BP), selected for validation, demonstrated 88.2% sensitivity (each), 100-96.2% specificity, 100-93.8% positive predictive value, and 92.9-92.6% negative predictive value, with 0.98-0.97 area under the curve (for chemerin - Gal-3BP, respectively) in differentiating 17 fetuses with severe cCMV from 26 asymptomatic CMV-infected fetuses. Interpretation: These results identify the immunomodulatory proteins chemerin and Gal-3BP as new highly predictive amniotic fluid biomarkers of cCMV severity, which could guide early prognostic stratification and potential personalized treatment of cCMV-infected fetuses. Funding: Israel Science Foundation; Research Fund of the Hadassah Medical Organization
Project description:Amniotic fluid has been proposed as an easily available source of cells for numerous applications in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. The use of amniotic fluid cells in biomedical applications necessitates their unequivocal characterization; however, the exact cellular composition of amniotic fluid and the precise tissue origins of these cells remain largely unclear. Using cells cultured from human amniotic fluid of the second trimester from a healthy fetus and fetuses with spina bifida aperta, we have performed single-cell RNA sequencing to characterize the tissue origin and marker expression of cultured amniotic fluid cells at the single-cell level. Our analysis identified nine different cell types of stromal, epithelial and immune cell phenotype, and from various fetal tissue origins, demonstrating the heterogeneity of the cultured amniotic fluid cell population at single-cell resolution. Further, our data question the presence of pluripotent stem cell populations in cultured AF, and provide a comprehensive list of markers for the characterization of its various progenitor and terminally differentiated cell types. Our study highlights the relevance of single-cell analysis approaches for the characterization of amniotic fluid cells in order to harness their full potential in biomedical research and clinical applications.
Project description:Distinct miRNA expression patterns may reflect anomalies related to fetal malformations such as spinal bifida (SB) or congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH), which could shed light on novel pathomechanism determination and subsequent diagnostic significance evaluation. The aim of this study was to determine the miRNA maternal expression profile in plasma and amniotic fluid samples of women carrying fetuses with SB and CDH.
Project description:SPO11-promoted DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) formation is a crucial step for meiotic recombination, and it is indispensable to detect the broken DNA ends accurately for dissecting the molecular mechanisms behind. Here, we report a novel technique, named DEtail-seq (DNA End tailing followed by sequencing), that can directly and quantitatively capture the meiotic DSB 3’ overhang hotspots at single-nucleotide resolution.
Project description:Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) are currently being evaluated in numerous preclinical and clinical cell-based therapy studies. Furthermore, there is an increasing interest in exploring alternative uses of these cells in disease modelling, pharmaceutical screening and regenerative medicine by applying reprogramming technologies. However, the limited availability of MSCs from various sources, restricts their use. Term amniotic fluid has been proposed as an alternative source of MSCs. Previously, only low volumes of term fluid and its cellular constituents have been collected, and current knowledge of the MSCs derived from this fluid is limited. In this study, we collected amniotic fluid at term using a novel collection system and evaluated amniotic fluid MSC content and their characteristics, including their feasibility to undergo cellular reprogramming.
Project description:To understand the molecular mechanisms underlying the congenital anomalies observed in patients with Trisomy 18, we compared gene expression in uncultured amniotic fluid supernatant samples from second trimester fetuses with Trisomy 18 and from euploid controls. Analysis of differential expression using both individual-gene and gene-set or pathway methods indicated disrupted function in ion transport, MHCII/T-cell mediated immunity, DNA repair, G-protein mediated signaling, kinases, and glycosylation. Significant down-regulation of genes involved in adrenal development was also identified in the trisomic fetuses, possibly explaining both the abnormal maternal serum estriols and the pre- and postnatal growth restriction found in this condition. We compared expression in five female fetuses with confirmed metaphase karotypes 47, XX, +18 and six female controls (46, XX). The gestational ages of the samples ranged from 17 5/7 to 20 6/7 weeks.