Characterization of dental pulp stem/stromal cells of Huntington monkey tooth germs

Brooke R Snyder,Shang-Hsun Yang,Anthony Ws Chan,Pei-Hsun Cheng,Anderson Hc Huang,Jinjing Yang

doi:10.1186/1471-2121-12-39

Brooke R Snyder, Shang-Hsun Yang + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2121-12-39

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Abstract

BackgroundDental pulp stem/stromal cells (DPSCs) are categorized as adult stem cells (ASCs) that retain multipotent differentiation capabilities. DPSCs can be isolated from individuals at any age and are considered to be true personal stem cells, making DPSCs one of the potential options for stem cell therapy. However, the properties of DPSCs from individuals with an inherited genetic disorder, such as Huntington's disease (HD), have not been fully investigated.ResultsTo examine if mutant huntingtin (htt) protein impacts DPSC properties, we have established DPSCs from tooth germ of transgenic monkeys that expressed both mutant htt and green fluorescent protein (GFP) genes (rHD/G-DPSCs), and from a monkey that expressed only the GFP gene (rG-DPSCs), which served as a control. Although mutant htt and oligomeric htt aggregates were overtly present in rHD/G-DPSCs, all rHD/G-DPSCs and rG-DPSCs shared similar characteristics, including self-renewal, multipotent differentiation capabilities, expression of stemness and differentiation markers, and cell surface antigen profile.ConclusionsOur results suggest that DPSCs from Huntington monkeys retain ASC properties. Thus DPSCs derived from individuals with genetic disorders such as HD could be a potential source of personal stem cells for therapeutic purposes.

Highlights

Dental pulp stem/stromal cells (DPSCs) are categorized as adult stem cells (ASCs) that retain multipotent differentiation capabilities
Establishment of DPSCs from Huntington’s disease (HD) monkeys We have isolated and established DPSCs from the teeth buds of three double-transgenic HD/G monkeys and one transgenic green fluorescent protein (GFP) monkey. rHD17 and rHD18 died shortly after birth at full term. Both rHD17 and rHD18 demonstrated HD phenotypes including severe dystonia and chorea [22]. rHD11 and rGFP were miscarried monkeys, born at four months of gestation. rHD/G-DPSCs have distinctive morphology including long and spindle shaped (Figure 1A) which were similar to published reports of rBMSCs [23], rhesus monkey DPSCs [4], Chimpanzee DPSCs (ChDPSCs) [2], hBMSCs and hDPSCs [3,24,25]
While the biofunctions of HDDPSCs may vary from those derived from adult individuals, our findings suggested rHD/G-DPSCs retain properties comparable to ASCs [3,4,24,27]

Summary

Introduction

Dental pulp stem/stromal cells (DPSCs) are categorized as adult stem cells (ASCs) that retain multipotent differentiation capabilities. DPSCs are ASCs and were first described in 2000 [1]. DPSCs share similar characteristics with bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (BMSCs) [1,2,3,4]. Most studies involving ASCs are derived from healthy donors, and studies involving DPSCs have, in general, been limited. Due to the advantages of using one’s own cells for therapy [13,14], plus their potential use in the central nervous system (CNS) [4,5,6,7,8,9,15,16], we are interested in characterizing DPSCs derived from individuals

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