Michael J Edel
University of Barcelona, Spain
Title: Advancing the induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) model to understand human biology and disease
Biography:
Dr. Michael Edel is a Group Leader and an accredited Associate Professor at the University of Barcelona, Faculty of Medicine with rolling Spanish national project grant funding. He completed his Ramon y Cajal in 2017 with I3 accreditation as distinguished Investigator. He is an expert in cancer genetics and cell pluripotency. His current research is concerned with the role of the cell cycle in attaining a pluripotent state, neural stem cell development and the development of cancer. His work has appeared in Cell (2005), Nature Biotechnology (2008) and Genes & Development (2010) and two of his publications are in the world’s top 1% most cited. He leads a group dedicated to developing new methods to make genetically stable high quality clinical grade stem cells and pluripotent stem cells to study human cardiac and neural disease with an extensive international and national collaboration.
Abstract:
The use of the induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) model is a powerful tool to study the biochemical, molecular biology and cell biology of human physiology and pathology. We have improved the model by developing a synthetic mRNA transfection method using clinical grade cell culture materials that is robust, efficient and maintains parental cell CNV. Human iPSC made with our new method and derived neural stem cells (iNSC) have significantly reduced genetic instability: (1) Lower multi-telomeric signal, (2) reduced double strand DNA breaks (DSB) measured by H2AX expression, (3) correct nuclear localization of Rad51 protein expression and (4) Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) reveals reduced DNA structural variations implicating less co-amplifications of cancer genes. In vivo analysis demonstrates reduced teratoma growth and proliferative rate of our iPSC and iNSC. The iNSC derived from our iPSC engraft in a spinal cord injury microenvironment, have a high percentage of survival, differentiate properly to neurons, oligodendrocytes and astrocytes over time with no evidence of pathology. In conclusion, we have developed a method to generate iPSC to generate improved genetically stable iPSC and iNSC for future applications to accurately model and understand human disease.