Project description:Liver transplantation is the only therapeutic option for patients with end-stage liver disease. The shortage of donor organs has led to the search for alternative therapies to restore liver function and bridge patients to transplantation. Our previous work has shown that the proliferation of late gestation E19 fetal hepatocytes is mitogen-independent. This is manifested as differences in the control of ribosome biogenesis, global translation, cell cycle progression and gene expression. In the present study, we investigated whether E19 fetal hepatocytes would engraft and repopulate an injured adult liver. Methods: Fetal hepatocytes were isolated using a monoclonal antibody against a hepatic surface protein, leucine amino peptidase (LAP). LAP+ and LAP- fractions were analyzed by immunofluorescence and microarray. Immunopurified E19 liver cells from DPPIV+ F344 rats were transplanted via splenic injection into partial hepatectomized DPPIV- rats that had been pretreated with mitomycin C. Results: Phenotypic characterization of the LAP+ fetal hepatocytes revealed that more than a third of the isolated cells expressed ductal markers. Transcriptomic analysis revealed that these dual expressing cells represent a distinct subpopulation of less well differentiated hepatocytes. Transplanted immunopurified LAP+ late gestation fetal hepatocytes formed small hepatic, endothelial and occasional ductal colonies within one month. The average size of the colonies derived from the LAP+ cells increased so that by 10 months up to 35% of the liver was repopulated by donor-derived cells. Conclusions: Our studies show that late gestation fetal hepatocytes, despite their being far along in the differentiation process, possess the capacity for extensive liver repopulation. This is likely related to the unexpected presence of a significant proportion of hepatocyte marker-positive cells maintaining a less well differentiated phenotype.
Project description:Knee osteoarthritis (KOA), as a degenerative multifactorial disease, affects the quality of life and mental health of patients, and also brings a huge socioeconomic burden. Treating synovitis have shown promise as anti-inflammatory therapeutics in mitigating OA symptoms and disease progression. Here, by analysing synovial single-cell sequencing (scRNA-seq) data from KOA, we found that synovial fibroblasts (FLS) in OA synovium showed a distinct pro-inflammatory phenotype. We collected synovial tissue from patients with clinical OA as well as from healthy donors, and histological examination was consistent with findings in scRNA-seq. Inspired by recent cross-tissue fibroblast lineage studies, we identified by sequencing that healthy FLS in synovial tissues share transcriptome-level similarities with dermal fibroblasts (DFb). Subsequently, we revealed the local as well as systemic distribution of intra-articular injected DFbs by constructing/extracting two types of rat fibroblasts (luciferase DFbs as well as GFP DFbs). The results demonstrate that DFbs can be locally retained in the synovium for up to three weeks following targeted engrafting on it. And intra-articular injection does not result in DFbs migration to vital organs or the occurrence of histological changes in these organs. A rat model of KOA was constructed by anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT) in order to study the therapeutic effect of DFbs on KOA. After injection, the rats showed improvement in painful gait. In addition, histological as well as imaging results showed reduced synovitis and improvement in articular cartilage. Finally we verified the protective effect of DFbs on cytokine-stimulated chondrocytes in a co-culture system.