Resumen:
Efficient induction of defined lineages in pluripotent stem cells constitutes the determinant step for the generation of therapeutically relevant replacement cells to potentially treat a wide range of diseases, including diabetes. Pancreatic differentiation has remained an important challenge in large part because of the need to differentiate uncommitted pluripotent stem cells into highly specialized hormone-secreting cells, which has been shown to require a developmentally informed step-by-step induction procedure. Here, in the framework of using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to generate pancreatic cells for pancreatic diseases, we have generated and characterized iPSCs from Pdxl-GFP transgenic mice. The use of a GFP reporter knocked into the endogenous Pdxl promoter allowed us to monitor pancreatic induction based on the expression of Pdxl, a pancreatic master transcription factor, and to isolate a pure Pdxl-GFP(+) population for downstream applications. Differentiated cultures timely expressed markers specific to each stage and end-stage progenies acquired a rather immature beta-cell phenotype, characterized by polyhormonal expression even among cells highly expressing the Pdxl-GFP reporter. Our findings highlight the utility of employing a fluorescent protein reporter under the control of a master developmental gene in order to devise novel differentiation protocols for relevant cell types for degenerative diseases such as pancreatic beta cells for diabetes. (C) 2016 International Society of Differentiation. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
