Project description:Human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-derived hepatocyte-like cells (HLCs) hold great promise for liver disease modeling, drug discovery, drug toxicity screens, or even regenerative therapies. Yet, several hurdles still need to be overcome, including among others decrease in the cost of goods to generate HLCs and automation of the differentiation process. We here describe that use of an automated liquid handling system results in highly reproducible HLC differentiation from hPSCs. This enabled us to screen 92 chemicals to replace expensive growth factors at each step of the differentiation protocol to reduce the cost of goods of the differentiation protocol by approximately 79%. In addition, we also evaluated several recombinant extracellular matrices (ECM) to replace Matrigel. We demonstrated that differentiation of hPSCs on Laminin-521 using an optimized small molecule combination resulted in HLCs that were transcriptionally identical to HLCs generated using current growth factor combinations. In addition, the HLCs created using the optimized small molecule combination also secreted similar concentrations of albumin and urea, and relatively low concentrations of alfa-fetoprotein (AFP), displayed similar CYP3A4 functionality and a similar drug toxicity susceptibility as HLCs generated with growth factor cocktails. The broad applicability of the new differentiation protocol was demonstrated for four different hPSC lines. This allowed the creation of a scalable, xeno-free, and cost-efficient hPSC-derived HLC culture, suitable for high throughput disease modeling and drug screenings, or even for the creation of HLCs for regenerative therapies.
Project description:Colorectal cancer (CRC) is among the most preventable cancers when precancerous lesions are detected at an early stage. Current screening methods for CRC require bowel prep or stool-based testing that are inconvenient, resulting in low compliance. Stool based tests have limited sensitivity for the detection of precancerous lesions.
The CMx platform has been showed to be able to the detection of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) in high sensitivity and specificity. In published studies, circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) are captured and quantified in advanced-stages of colorectal cancer. In order to detect early and pre-cancer circulating tumor cells, we have developed an Automated Liquid Biopsy Platform that improves the detection of CTCs in early cancer stages. Therefore, this study goals are: 1) to establish a standard detection process utilizing the Automated Liquid Biopsy Platform. 2) Parallel comparison of laboratory manual operation and Automated Liquid Biopsy Platform. 3) Verify the feasibility of use of an Automated Liquid Biopsy Platform in the clinical setting.
Project description:Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have become an essential tool for both modeling how causal genetic variants impact cellular function in disease, as well as being an emerging source of tissue for transplantation medicine. Unfortunately the preparation of somatic cells, their reprogramming and the subsequent verification of iPSC pluripotency are laborious, manual processes that limit the scale and level of reproducibility of this technology. Here we describe a modular, robotic platform for iPSC reprogramming that enables automated, high-throughput conversion of skin biopsies into iPSCs and differentiated cells with minimal manual intervention. Using this platform, we demonstrate that automated reprogramming and the pooled selection of pluripotent cells results in high quality, stable, iPSCs. These lines display less line-to-line variation than either manually produced lines or lines produced through automation followed by single colony-subcloning. The robotic platform we describe will enable the application of iPSCs to population-scale biomedical problems including the study of complex genetic diseases and the development of personalized medicines.
Project description:Due to the low stoichiometry of protein phosphorylation, targeted enrichment prior to LC-MS/MS analysis is still essential. The trend in phosphoproteome analysis is shifting towards an increasing number of biological replicates per experiment, ideally starting from very low sample amounts, placing new demands on enrichment protocols to make them less labor-intensive, more sensitive and less prone to variability. Here, we assessed an automated enrichment protocol using Fe(III)-IMAC cartridges on a AssayMAP Bravo platform to meet these demands. The automated Fe(III)-IMAC-based enrichment workflow proved to be more effective when compared to a TiO2-based enrichment using the same platform and a manual Ti(IV)-IMAC-based enrichment workflow. As initial samples, a dilution series of both human HeLa cell and primary rat hippocampal neuron lysates was used, going down to 0.1 µg of peptide starting material. The optimized workflow proved to be efficient, sensitive and reproducible, identifying, localizing and quantifying thousands of phosphosites from just micrograms of starting material. To further test the automated workflow in genuine biological applications we monitored EGF-induced signaling in hippocampal neurons, starting with only 200,000 primary cells resulting in approximately 50 µg of protein material. This revealed a comprehensive phosphoproteome, showing regulation of multiple members of the MAPK pathway and reduced phosphorylation status of two glutamate receptors involved in synaptic plasticity.
Project description:To acquire a deeper understanding of malignant melanoma (MM), it is essential to study the proteome of patient tissues. In particular, phosphoproteomics of MM has become of significant importance because of the central role that phosphorylation plays in the development of MM. Investigating clinical samples, however, is an extremely challenging task as there is usually only very limited quantities of material available to perform targeted enrichment approaches. Here, an automated phosphopeptide enrichment protocol using the AssayMap Bravo platform was applied to MM tissues and assessed for performance. The strategy proved to be highly-sensitive, less prone to variability, less laborious than existing techniques and adequate for starting quantities at the microgram level. An Fe(III)-NTA-IMAC-based enrichment workflow was applied to a dilution series of MM tissue lysates. The workflow was efficient in terms of sensitivity, reproducibility and phosphosite localization; and from only 12.5 µg of sample, more than 1,000 phosphopeptides were identified. In addition, from 60 µg of protein material the number of identified phosphoproteins from individual MM samples was comparable to previous reports that used extensive fractionation methods. Our data set included key pathways that are involved in MM progression; such as MAPK, melanocyte development and integrin signaling. Moreover, tissue-specific immunological proteins were identified, that have not been previously observed in the proteome of MM-derived cell lines. In conclusion, this workflow is suitable to study large cohorts of clinical samples that demand automatic and careful handling.
Project description:We developed the microfluidic-oscillatory-washing-based ChIP-Seq (MOWChIP-Seq) protocol. We achieved genome-wide mapping of histone modifications (H3K4me3 and H3K27ac) with as few as 100 cells. Moreover, the automated microfluidic platform dramatically reduced assay time and has a potential for future scale-up.
2015-07-21 | GSE65516 | GEO
Project description:Cross-interface Injection: A General Nanoliter Liquid Handling Method Applied to Single Cells Genome Amplification Automated Nanoliter Liquid Handling Applied to Single Cell Multiple Displacement Amplification
Project description:Exome libraries from 47 blood and tissue samples were prepared using Agilent SureSelect Human Exome Library Preparation V5 kit and the Agilent Bravo Automation System fExome libraries were pooled and sequenced with the TruSeq SBS sequencing chemistry using a V4 high throughput flowcell on a HiSeq 2500 platform following Illumina’s recommended protocol. Approximately 6-8 gigabases of raw paired end data of 126-bases were generated per exome library.
Project description:Visualization of gene expression in lung tissue was performed using Visium spatial gene expression kits (10x Genomics) following the manufacturer`s protocol. The four capture areas in a 10x Genomics Visium Gene Expression slide consist of 5000 spots with DNA oligos for mRNA capture that have a unique spatial barcode and a unique Molecular Identifier (UMI). Each spot has 55 µm diameter and can therefore capture mRNA from 1 to 10 cells. We report the spatially resolved transcriptome of 3 control lung samples from non-COVID-19-related pneumonia donors and 9 COVID-19 lung samples analyzed with the 10x Visium platform.
Project description:294 formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue samples were sent to the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center Translational Genomics Lab (TGL) for RNA isolation using the Maxwell 16 MDx Instrument (Promega AS3000) and the Maxwell 16 LEV RNA FFPE Kit (Promega AS1260) following the manufacturer’s protocol (Promega 9FB167). 279 total RNA sequencing libraries were prepared at TGL using a Bravo Automated Liquid-Handling Platform (Agilent G5562A) and the TruSeq Stranded Total RNA Library Prep Gold Kit (Illumina 20020599) following the manufacturer’s protocol (Illumina 1000000040499). RNAseq library quality and quantity were measured using a TapeStation 4200 (Agilent G2991AA) and Qubit 3.0 fluorometer (Life Technologies Q33216), pooled at equal molar ratios, and denatured following the manufacturer’s protocol (Illumina 1000000106351). 271 total RNA sequencing libraries were sequenced at TGL on NovaSeq 6000 (Illumina 20012850) S4 flow cells (Illumina 20028313) following the manufacturer’s protocol (Illumina 1000000019358) using a 2x50 bp paired-end configuration and pool sizes of 91 libraries to target a read depth of 110 million clusters per library on average.