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Engineered skeletal muscle recapitulates human muscle development, regeneration and dystrophy.

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BACKGROUND: Human pluripotent stem cell-derived muscle models show great potential for translational research. Here, we describe developmentally inspired methods for the derivation of skeletal muscle … cells and their utility in skeletal muscle tissue engineering with the aim to model skeletal muscle regeneration and dystrophy in vitro. METHODS: Key steps include the directed differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells to embryonic muscle progenitors followed by primary and secondary foetal myogenesis into three-dimensional muscle. To simulate Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cell line was compared to a CRISPR/Cas9-edited isogenic control line. RESULTS: The established skeletal muscle differentiation protocol robustly and faithfully recapitulates critical steps of embryonic myogenesis in two-dimensional and three-dimensional cultures, resulting in functional human skeletal muscle organoids (SMOs) and engineered skeletal muscles (ESMs) with a regeneration-competent satellite-like cell pool. Tissue-engineered muscle exhibits organotypic maturation and function (up to 5.7 +/- 0.5 mN tetanic twitch tension at 100 Hz in ESM). Contractile performance could be further enhanced by timed thyroid hormone treatment, increasing the speed of contraction (time to peak contraction) as well as relaxation (time to 50% relaxation) of single twitches from 107 +/- 2 to 75 +/- 4 ms (P < 0.05) and from 146 +/- 6 to 100 +/- 6 ms (P < 0.05), respectively. Satellite-like cells could be documented as largely quiescent PAX7(+) cells (75 +/- 6% Ki67(-) ) located adjacent to muscle fibres confined under a laminin-containing basal membrane. Activation of the engineered satellite-like cell niche was documented in a cardiotoxin injury model with marked recovery of contractility to 57 +/- 8% of the pre-injury force 21 days post-injury (P < 0.05 compared to Day 2 post-injury), which was completely blocked by preceding irradiation. Absence of dystrophin in DMD ESM caused a marked reduction of contractile force (-35 +/- 7%, P < 0.05) and impaired expression of fast myosin isoforms resulting in prolonged contraction (175 +/- 14 ms, P < 0.05 vs. gene-edited control) and relaxation (238 +/- 22 ms, P < 0.05 vs. gene-edited control) times. Restoration of dystrophin levels by gene editing rescued the DMD phenotype in ESM. CONCLUSIONS: We introduce human muscle models with canonical properties of bona fide skeletal muscle in vivo to study muscle development, maturation, disease and repair.

Authors: M. Shahriyari, M. R. Islam, S. M. Sakib, M. Rinn, A. Rika, D. Kruger, L. Kaurani, V. Gisa, M. Winterhoff, H. Anandakumar, O. Shomroni, M. Schmidt, G. Salinas, A. Unger, W. A. Linke, J. Zschuntzsch, J. Schmidt, R. Bassel-Duby, E. N. Olson, A. Fischer, W. H. Zimmermann, M. Tiburcy

Date Published: 19th Oct 2022

Publication Type: Journal

Intronic CRISPR Repair in a Preclinical Model of Noonan Syndrome-Associated Cardiomyopathy.

Abstract (Expand)

BACKGROUND: Noonan syndrome (NS) is a multisystemic developmental disorder characterized by common, clinically variable symptoms, such as typical facial dysmorphisms, short stature, developmental delay, … intellectual disability as well as cardiac hypertrophy. The underlying mechanism is a gain-of-function of the RAS-mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling pathway. However, our understanding of the pathophysiological alterations and mechanisms, especially of the associated cardiomyopathy, remains limited and effective therapeutic options are lacking. METHODS: Here, we present a family with two siblings displaying an autosomal recessive form of NS with massive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy as clinically the most prevalent symptom caused by biallelic mutations within the leucine zipper-like transcription regulator 1 (LZTR1). We generated induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes of the affected siblings and investigated the patient-specific cardiomyocytes on the molecular and functional level. RESULTS: Patients' induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes recapitulated the hypertrophic phenotype and uncovered a so-far-not-described causal link between LZTR1 dysfunction, RAS-mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling hyperactivity, hypertrophic gene response and cellular hypertrophy. Calcium channel blockade and MEK inhibition could prevent some of the disease characteristics, providing a molecular underpinning for the clinical use of these drugs in patients with NS, but might not be a sustainable therapeutic option. In a proof-of-concept approach, we explored a clinically translatable intronic CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) repair and demonstrated a rescue of the hypertrophic phenotype. CONCLUSIONS: Our study revealed the human cardiac pathogenesis in patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes from NS patients carrying biallelic variants in LZTR1 and identified a unique disease-specific proteome signature. In addition, we identified the intronic CRISPR repair as a personalized and in our view clinically translatable therapeutic strategy to treat NS-associated hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Authors: U. Hanses, M. Kleinsorge, L. Roos, G. Yigit, Y. Li, B. Barbarics, I. El-Battrawy, H. Lan, M. Tiburcy, R. Hindmarsh, C. Lenz, G. Salinas, S. Diecke, C. Muller, I. Adham, J. Altmuller, P. Nurnberg, T. Paul, W. H. Zimmermann, G. Hasenfuss, B. Wollnik, L. Cyganek

Date Published: 15th Sep 2020

Publication Type: Journal

Extracellular Vesicles Derived from Neural Progenitor Cells--a Preclinical Evaluation for Stroke Treatment in Mice.

Abstract (Expand)

Stem cells such as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) enhance neurological recovery in preclinical stroke models by secreting extracellular vesicles (EVs). Since previous reports have focused on the application … of MSC-EVs only, the role of the most suitable host cell for EV enrichment and preclinical stroke treatment remains elusive. The present study aimed to evaluate the therapeutic potential of EVs derived from neural progenitor cells (NPCs) following experimental stroke. Using the PEG technique, EVs were enriched and characterized by electron microscopy, proteomics, rt-PCR, nanosight tracking analysis, and Western blotting. Different dosages of NPC-EVs displaying a characteristic profile in size, shape, cargo protein, and non-coding RNA contents were incubated in the presence of cerebral organoids exposed to oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD), significantly reducing cell injury when compared with control organoids. Systemic administration of NPC-EVs in male C57BL6 mice following experimental ischemia enhanced neurological recovery and neuroregeneration for as long as 3 months. Interestingly, the therapeutic impact of such NPC-EVs was found to be not inferior to MSC-EVs. Flow cytometric analyses of blood and brain samples 7 days post-stroke demonstrated increased blood concentrations of B and T lymphocytes after NPC-EV delivery, without affecting cerebral cell counts. Likewise, a biodistribution analysis after systemic delivery of NPC-EVs revealed the majority of NPC-EVs to be found in extracranial organs such as the liver and the lung. This proof-of-concept study supports the idea of EVs being a general concept of stem cell-induced neuroprotection under stroke conditions, where EVs contribute to reverting the peripheral post-stroke immunosuppression.

Authors: X. Zheng, L. Zhang, Y. Kuang, V. Venkataramani, F. Jin, K. Hein, M. P. Zafeiriou, C. Lenz, W. Moebius, E. Kilic, D. M. Hermann, M. S. Weber, H. Urlaub, W. H. Zimmermann, M. Bahr, T. R. Doeppner

Date Published: 4th May 2020

Publication Type: Journal

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