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Hydrogel scaffolds promote neural gene expression and structural reorganization in human astrocyte cultures

ABSTRACT: Biomaterial scaffolds have the potential to enhance neuronal development and regeneration. Understanding the genetic responses of astrocytes and neurons to biomaterials could facilitate the development of synthetic environments that enable the specification of neural tissue organization with engineered scaffolds. In this study, we used high throughput transcriptomic and imaging methods to determine the impact of a hydrogel with no known bioactive epitopes, Puramatrix™, on human glial cells in vitro. Parallel studies were undertaken with cells grown in a monolayer environment on tissue culture polystyrene. When the Normal Human Astrocyte (NHA) cell line is grown in a hydrogel matrix environment, the glial cells adopt a structural organization that resembles that of neuronal-glial cocultures, where neurons form clusters that are distinct from the surrounding glia. Statistical analysis of next generation RNA sequencing data uncovered a set of genes that are differentially expressed in the monolayer and matrix hydrogel environments. Functional analysis demonstrated that hydrogel-upregulated genes can be grouped into three broad categories: neuronal differentiation and/or neural plasticity, response to neural insult, and sensory perception. Our results demonstrate that hydrogel biomaterials have the potential to transform human glial cell identity, and may have applications in the repair of damaged brain tissue

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE81995 | GEO | 2016/12/12

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA323594

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:This experiment is part of the FunGenES project (FunGenES - "Functional Genomics in Embryonic Stem Cells" partially funded by the 6th Framework Programme of the European Union, http://www.fungenes.org). The experiment was conducted at the "Instituto de Medicina Molecular,Faculdade de Medicina de Lisboa", Portugal. Goal of the experiment is the in vitro generation and characterisation of neurons from embryonic stem (ES) cells. This is a promising approach to produce cells suitable for neural tissue repair and cell-based replacement therapies of the nervous system. Available methods to promote ES cell differentiation towards neural lineages try to replicate, in different ways, the multistep process of embryonic neural development. However, to achieve this aim in an efficient and reproducible way, a better knowledge of the cellular and molecular events that are involved in the process, from the initial specification of neuroepithelial progenitors (NPs) to their terminal differentiation into neurons and glial cells, is required. In this work, we characterize the main stages and transitions that occur when ES cells are driven into a neural fate, using an adherent monolayer system [1]. We established improved conditions to routinely produce highly homogeneous cultures of NPs, which display morphological and functional characteristics of their embryonic counterparts, namely, apico-basal polarity, active Notch signalling, and proper timing of production of neurons and glia. We show that the transition to neuronal production is linked to the organization of NPs into neural tube-like rosettes, where these cells divide and give rise to neurons. In order to characterize the global gene activity correlated with each particular stage of neural differentiation, the full transcriptome of different cell populations that arise during the in vitro differentiation protocol was determined by microarray analysis. By using embryo-oriented criteria to cluster the differentially expressed genes, we define five synexpression groups that correlate with successive stages in the path from ES cells to neurons. This resulted in the identification of unique gene signatures for each cell stage, predicting in addition some of the molecular pathways associated with the transitions between these stages. Overall, our work confirms and extends the cellular and molecular parallels between monolayer ES cell neural differentiation and embryonic neural development, revealing novel aspects of the genetic network underlying the multistep process that leads from uncommitted cells to differentiated neurons.

Project description:Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) represent an unlimited cell source for the generation of in vitro models of patient-specific dopaminergic (DA) neurons, posing a possibility to overcome the restricted accessibility to disease-affected tissue for mechanistic studies on Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, the complexity of the human brain is not fully recapitulated by existing monolayer culture methods. Consequently, neurons differentiated in a three dimensional (3D) in vitro culture system might better mimic the in vivo cellular environment for basic mechanistic studies and represent better predictors of drug responses in vivo. Thus, in this work we established a new in vitro cell culture model based on the microencapsulation of hiPSCs in small alginate/fibronectin beads and their differentiation to DA neurons. Optimisation of hydrogel matrix concentrations and composition resulted in high viability of embedded iPSCs. Neural differentiation capacity and DA neuronal yield, analyzed by qRT-PCR, immunofluorescence, and western blot analyses, were increased in the 3D neuronal cultures compared to neurons generated using the conventional 2D culture system. Additionally, electrophysiological parameters and metabolic switching profile supported the increased functionality and an anticipated metabolic resetting of neurons grown in alginate scaffolds with respect to the 2D neurons. We also report long-term maintenance of neuronal cultures and mature functional properties. Furthermore, our findings indicate that our 3D model system can recapitulate mitochondrial superoxide production as an important mitochondrial phenotype observed in PD patients’-derived neurons and that this phenotype might be detectable earlier during neuronal differentiation. Taken together, these results indicate that our alginate-based 3D culture system offers an advantageous strategy for the reliable and rapid derivation of mature and functional DA neurons from iPSCs.

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Hydrogel scaffolds promote neural gene expression and structural reorganization in human astrocyte cultures

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