Modeling Down Syndrome with Patient iPSCs Reveals Cellular and Migration Deficits of GABAergic Neurons.

The brain of Down syndrome (DS) patients exhibits fewer interneurons in the cerebral cortex, but its underlying mechanism remains unknown. By morphometric analysis of cortical interneurons generated from DS and euploid induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), we found that DS GABA neurons are smaller and with fewer neuronal processes. The proportion of calretinin over calbindin GABA neurons is reduced, and the neuronal migration capacity is decreased. Such phenotypes were replicated following transplantation of the DS GABAergic progenitors into the mouse medial septum. Gene expression profiling revealed altered cell migratory pathways, and correction of the PAK1 pathway mitigated the cell migration deficit in vitro. These results suggest that impaired migration of DS GABAergic neurons may contribute to the reduced number of interneurons in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus in DS patients.

Directed differentiation of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons from human pluripotent stem cells.

BACKGROUND: Basal forebrain cholinergic neurons (BFCNs) play critical roles in learning, memory and cognition. Dysfunction or degeneration of BFCNs may connect to neuropathology, such as Alzheimer's disease, Down's syndrome and dementia. Generation of functional BFCNs may contribute to the studies of cell-based therapy and pathogenesis that is related to learning and memory deficits. NEW METHOD: Here we describe a detail method for robust generation of BFCNs from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). In this method, BFCN progenitors are patterned from hESC or hiPSC-derived primitive neuroepithelial cells, with the treatment of sonic hedgehog (SHH) or combination with its agonist Purmorphamine, and by co-culturing with human astrocytes. RESULTS: At day 20, ∼90% hPSC-derived progenitors expressed NKX2.1, which is a transcriptional marker for MGE. Moreover, around 40% of NKX2.1+ cells co-expressed OLIG2 and ∼15% of NKX2.1+ cells co-expressed ISLET1, which are ventral markers. At day 35, ∼40% neurons robustly express ChAT, most of which are co-labeled with NKX2.1, ISLET1 and FOXG1, indicating the basal forebrain-like identity. At day 45, these neurons express mature neuronal markers MAP2, Synapsin, and VAChT. COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHOD(S): In this method, undefined conditions including genetic modification or cell-sorting are avoided. As a choice, feeder free conditions are used to avoid ingredients of animal origin. Moreover, Purmorphamine can be substituted for SHH to induce ventral progenitors effectively and economically. CONCLUSION: We provide an efficient method to generate BFCNs from multiple hPSC lines, which offers the potential application for disease modeling and pharmacological studies.

Efficient generation of region-specific forebrain neurons from human pluripotent stem cells under highly defined condition.

Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) have potential to differentiate to unlimited number of neural cells, which provide powerful tools for neural regeneration. To date, most reported protocols were established with an animal feeder system. However, cells derived on this system are inappropriate for the translation to clinical applications because of the introduction of xenogenetic factors. In this study, we provided an optimized paradigm to generate region-specific forebrain neurons from hPSCs under a defined system. We assessed five conditions and found that a vitronectin-coated substrate was the most efficient method to differentiate hPSCs to neurons and astrocytes. More importantly, by applying different doses of purmorphamine, a small-molecule agonist of sonic hedgehog signaling, hPSCs were differentiated to different region-specific forebrain neuron subtypes, including glutamatergic neurons, striatal medium spiny neurons, and GABA interneurons. Our study offers a highly defined system without exogenetic factors to produce human neurons and astrocytes for translational medical studies, including cell therapy and stem cell-based drug discovery.