Tissue nanotransfection
Reprogrammed skin cells cured mice with sore paws
American scientists from Ohio University have created a new technology that can be used to reprogram skin cells into other types of cells.
Cell therapy (or cell transplantology) is used to repair damaged organs and tissues by transplanting healthy cells into a diseased organism (for example, burns). This is a very promising direction in regenerative medicine. Previously, the method of viral transfection was used to prepare (reprogram) cells. In this method, the necessary DNA is packed into a viral particle, which then infects the cell, penetrating it, and thus transfers someone else's DNA into the cell. But this method showed a number of serious drawbacks and led in some cases to the death of patients. Therefore, scientists engaged in regenerative medicine have begun to develop other, simpler and safer methods.
In a new paper, American researchers presented one of these promising methods, which they called tissue nanotransfection (TNT). According to scientists, the TNT method has two components – the transformation using a microchip of one type of cell into another and the transplantation of cells into a living body. According to the authors, the reprogramming of skin cells by TNT is based on the previously discovered method of induced neurons, when certain transcription factors are introduced into skin cells, triggering the process of transformation of skin cells into neurons.
As a source of cells for transplantation, scientists took mouse skin cells – fibroblasts. They are the most numerous in both animals and humans, and it is easy to carry out the necessary manipulations with them. Using the TNT method, scientists reprogrammed mouse fibroblasts into vascular cells.
After that, the resulting cells were transplanted into mice with artificially induced limb ischemia (ligation of the femoral artery). Observations have shown that within one week active blood vessels appeared in the damaged paws of mice, and by the second week the paw was already healthy. In laboratory tests, this technology also showed the ability to reprogram skin cells into nerve cells, which were then injected into mice with a brain damaged by a stroke. And such mice showed an improvement in the state of the brain.
"We have shown that the skin is a kind of "fertile land" where we can grow elements of any organ that loses function. Using our new nanochip technology, it is possible to replace damaged or poorly functioning organs," the researchers write.
The study is published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
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29.08.2017