Tissues derived from reprogrammed Wharton's jelly stem cells of the umbilical cord as a platform to study gestational diabetes mellitus.

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) has been strongly associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in later child and adulthood. The human umbilical cord and its contents are of fetal origin and represent the fetus genetically and physiologically. Since it is not possible to obtain tissues from the fetus and newborn to investigate the association between GDM and later T2DM, we reprogrammed the stem cells from the Wharton's jelly of umbilical cords (hWJSCs) of GDM and non-GDM mothers into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and then differentiated the iPSCs into insulin-producing cells (IPCs) to provide pancreatic tissues that represent the fetus of GDM and normal mothers.

Manufacturing of human Wharton's jelly stem cells for clinical use: selection of serum is important.

Background: Human Wharton's jelly-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (hWJSCs) have gained considerable attention for their use in cell therapy. Many of these applications would require manufacturing of millions of hWJSCs. It is, therefore, necessary to develop a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP)-compliant hWJSC expansion protocol, allowing the generation of a large quantity of cells to meet both clinical and regulatory requirements.

Changes in Stemness Properties, Differentiation Potential, Oxidative Stress, Senescence and Mitochondrial Function in Wharton's Jelly Stem Cells of Umbilical Cords of Mothers with Gestational Diabetes Mellitus.

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) has been associated with an increased risk of maternal and neonatal morbidity. The Wharton's jelly (WJ) of the umbilical cord (UC) is a useful indicator of the deleterious effects of hyperglycemia on fetal tissues as it represents the fetus embryologically, physiologically and genetically. We studied WJ mesenchymal stem cells (hWJSCs) from UC from mothers without GDM (Normal; n = 3); insulin-controlled GDM mothers (GDMi; n = 3) and diet-controlled GDM mothers (GDMd; n = 3)].

The use of transformed IMR90 cell model to identify the potential extra-telomeric effects of hTERT in cell migration and DNA damage response.

Background: Human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT), the catalytic subunit of telomesase, is responsible for telomere maintenance and its reactivation is implicated in almost 90% human cancers. Recent evidences show that hTERT is essential for neoplastic transformation independent of its canonical function. However, the roles of hTERT in the process remain elusive.

Telomere shortening in human diseases.

The discovery of telomeres dates back to the early 20th century. In humans, telomeres are heterochromatic structures with tandem DNA repeats of 5'-TTAGGG-3' at the chromosomal ends. Telomere length varies greatly among species and ranges from 10 to 15 kb in humans.

Elite model for the generation of induced pluripotent cancer cells (iPCs).

The inefficiency of generating induced pluripotent somatic cells (iPS) engendered two contending models, namely the Stochastic model and Elite model. Although the former is more favorable to explain the inherent inefficiencies, it may be fallible to extrapolate the same working model to reprogramming of cancer cells. Indeed, tumor cells are known to be inherently heterogeneous with respect to distinctive characteristics thus providing a suitable platform to test whether the reprogramming process of cancer cells is biased.

Reversal of aberrant cancer methylome and transcriptome upon direct reprogramming of lung cancer cells.

Recent reports on direct reprogramming of cancer cells (iPCs) which results in reduced tumorigenic potential has attributed the importance of epigenetics in tumorigenesis, but lacked genome-wide analysis. Here we describe successful generation of iPCs from non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell lines. Following reprogramming, they resembled embryonic stem and induced pluripotent stem cells in pluripotency markers expression, gene expression patterns and in vitro differentiation ability.