Faculty Bibliography

Changes in cell identity occur in adult mammalian organisms but are rare and often linked to disease. Research in the last few decades has thrown light on how to manipulate cell fate, but the conversion of a particular cell type into another within a living organism (also termed in vivo transdifferentiation) has only been recently achieved in a limited number of tissues. Although the therapeutic promise of this strategy for tissue regeneration and repair is exciting, important efficacy and safety concerns will need to be addressed before it becomes a reality in the clinical practice. Here, we review the most relevant in vivo transdifferentiation studies in adult mammalian animal models, offering a critical assessment of this potentially powerful strategy for regenerative medicine.

Chromatin dynamics have been the major focus of many physiological and pathological processes over the past 20 years. Epigenetic mechanisms have been shown to be reshaped during both cellular reprogramming and tumorigenesis. For this reason, cancer cell reprogramming can provide a powerful tool to better understand both regenerative and cancer-fate processes, with a potential to develop novel therapeutic approaches. Recent studies showed that cancer cells can be reprogrammed to a pluripotent state by the overexpression of reprogramming transcription factors. Activation of transcription factors and modification of chromatin regulators may result in the remodeling of epigenetic status and refueling of tumorigenicity in these reprogrammed cancer cells. However, studies focusing on cancer cell reprogramming are contradictory; some studies reported increased tumor progression whereas others showed that cellular reprogramming has a treatment potential for cancer. In this review, first, the current knowledge on the epigenetic mechanisms involved during cancer development and cellular reprogramming will be presented. Later, different reports and key factors about pluripotency-based reprogramming of cancer cells will be reviewed in detail. New insights will be provided on cancer biology and therapy in the light of cellular reprogramming.

Peptide nanofibers (PNFs) are one-dimensional assemblies of amphiphilic peptides in a cylindrical geometry. We postulated that peptide nanofibers (PNFs) can provide the tools for genetic intervention and be used for delivery of siRNA, as they can be engineered with positively charged amino acids that can electrostatically bind siRNA. The aim of this work was to investigate the use of PNFs as vectors for siRNA delivery providing effective gene knockdown. We designed a surfactant-like peptide (palmitoyl-GGGAAAKRK) able to self-assemble into PNFs and demonstrated that complexes of PNF:siRNA are uptaken intracellularly and increase the residence time of siRNA in the brain after intracranial administration. The biological activity of the complexes was investigated in vitro by analyzing the down-regulation of the expression of a targeted protein (BCL2), as well as induction of apoptosis, as well as in vivo by analyzing the relative gene expression upon stereotactic administration into a deep rat brain structure (the subthalamic nucleus). Gene expression levels of BCL2 mRNA showed that PNF:siBCL2 constructs were able to silence the target BCL2 in specific loci of the brain. Silencing of the BCL2 gene resulted in ablation of neuronal cell populations, indicating that genetic interventions by PNF:siRNA complexes may lead to novel treatment strategies of CNS pathologies.

The in vivo cell reprogramming of terminally differentiated somatic cells to a pluripotent state by the ectopic expression of defined transcription factors has been previously shown in the BALB/c mouse liver upon plasmid DNA injection with no teratoma formation in the host tissue. Here, we hypothesized that the reprogrammed cells could be extracted from the tissue and cultured in vitro. We called these cells in vivo induced pluripotent stem (i(2)PS) cells because they showed pluripotent characteristics equivalent to a standard mouse ES cell line (E14TG2A). The pluripotent character of i(2)PS cells was determined by a battery of morphological, molecular and functional assays, including their contribution to adult tissues of chimeric mice upon blastocyst injection. These observations further confirm that terminally differentiated somatic cells in wild type, adult animals can be reprogrammed in vivo using virus-free methodologies. The reprogrammed cells can generate in vitro stem cell colonies that exhibit pluripotency similar to ES cells with numerous implications for the application of in vivo reprogramming for tissue regenerative purposes.