Pre-differentiation of human MSCs from adipose tissue into hepatocyte-like cells in vitro facilitates long term functional hepatic integration in vivo.

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PMM2-CDG, formerly known as congenital disorder of glycosylation-Ia (CDG-Ia), is caused by mutations in the gene encoding phosphomannomutase 2 (PMM2). This disease is the most frequent form of inherited CDG-diseases affecting protein N-glycosylation in human. PMM2-CDG is a multisystemic disease with severe psychomotor and mental retardation. In order to study the pathophysiology of PMM2-CDG in a human cell culture model, we generated induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from fibroblasts of a PMM2-CDG-patient (PMM2-iPSCs). Expression of pluripotency factors and in vitro differentiation into cell types of the three germ layers was unaffected in the analyzed clone PMM2-iPSC-C3 compared with nondiseased human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), revealing no broader influence of the PMM2 mutation on pluripotency in cell culture. Analysis of gene expression by deep-sequencing did not show obvious differences in the transcriptome between PMM2-iPSC-C3 and nondiseased hPSCs. By multiplexed capillary gel electrophoresis coupled to laser induced fluorescence detection (xCGE-LIF) we could show that PMM2-iPSC-C3 exhibit the common hPSC N-glycosylation pattern with high-mannose-type N-glycans as the predominant species. However, phosphomannomutase activity of PMM2-iPSC-C3 was 27% compared with control hPSCs and lectin staining revealed an overall reduced protein glycosylation. In addition, quantitative assessment of N-glycosylation by xCGE-LIF showed an up to 40% reduction of high-mannose-type N-glycans in PMM2-iPSC-C3, which was in concordance to the observed reduction of the Glc3Man9GlcNAc2 lipid-linked oligosaccharide compared with control hPSCs. Thus we could model the PMM2-CDG disease phenotype of hypoglycosylation with patient derived iPSCs in vitro. Knock-down of PMM2 by shRNA in PMM2-iPSC-C3 led to a residual activity of 5% and to a further reduction of the level of N-glycosylation. Taken together we have developed human stem cell-based cell culture models with stepwise reduced levels of N-glycosylation now enabling to study the role of N-glycosylation during early human development.

Somatic cells can be reprogrammed toward pluripotency by overexpression of a set of transcription factors, yielding induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) with features similar to embryonic stem cells. Little is known to date about stoichiometric requirements of the individual reprogramming factors (RFs) for efficient reprogramming and especially about whether stoichiometry also influences the quality of derived iPSCs. To address this important issue, we chose bicistronic lentiviral vectors coexpressing fluorescent reporters (eGFP, dTomato, Cerulean, or Venus) along with the canonical RFs to transduce a bulk of murine embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs). Using a flow cytometric approach, we were able to independently and proportionally quantify all fluorophores in multiple-infected MEFs and more importantly could sort these cells into all 16 stoichiometric combinations of high or moderate expression of the four factors. On average, we obtained about 600 alkaline phosphatase-expressing colonies from 20,000 seeded cells. Interestingly, only seven different stoichiometric ratios gave rise to any colonies at all. The by far most colonies were obtained from those fractions, where Oct4 was in excess over the other three factors (2,386 colonies/20,000 cells), or where both Oct4 and c-Myc were in excess over Sox2 and Klf4 (1,593 colonies/20,000 cells). Our findings suggest that increased Oct4 levels opposite to modest ones for Sox2 and Klf4 are required for satisfying reprogramming efficiencies and that these stoichiometries are also highly beneficial for achieving a stable pluripotent state independent of ectopic RF expression. Finally, the eligible Oct4 high , Sox2 low , and Klf4 low subpopulation only resembles a small fraction of cells targeted by equal vector amounts, suggesting the necessity to address stoichiometry also in alternative approaches for iPSC generation or between different experimental systems. 1,2). In comparison to other reprogramming means such as nuclear transfer or cell fusion, iPSC generation remains an inefficient process yielding not only fully but also partially reprogrammed cells with aberrant transcriptional profiles. Attempts to reduce the number of reprogramming factors (RFs) to three (3), two (4), or even one (5) demonstrate that only Oct4 is not dispensable. Because yield and speed are yet further decreased by such complete omission of factors, using all four RFs intending an equal stoichiometry remains the

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