Long-term expansion of directly reprogrammed keratinocyte-like cells and in vitro reconstitution of human skin.

Background: Human keratinocytes and derived products are crucial for skin repair and regeneration. Despite substantial advances in engineered skin equivalents, their poor availability and immunorejection remain major challenges in skin grafting.

Methods: Induced keratinocyte-like cells (iKCs) were directly reprogrammed from human urine cells by retroviral transduction of two lineage-specific transcription factors BMI1 and △NP63α (BN).

Glycine decarboxylase regulates the maintenance and induction of pluripotency via metabolic control.

Reprogramming of 'adult' differentiated somatic cells to 'embryonic' pluripotent stem cells accompanied by increased rate of glycolysis. Conversely, glycolysis triggers accumulation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs), a potential causative factor in aging, by promoting methylglyoxal production. Therefore, it is reasonable that pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) would specifically regulate glycolysis to maintain their embryonic features.

Additive effect of bFGF and selenium on expansion and paracrine action of human amniotic fluid-derived mesenchymal stem cells.

Background: Mesenchymal stem cell-derived conditioned medium (MSC-CM) has emerged as a promising cell-free tool for restoring degenerative diseases and treating traumatic injuries. The present study describes the effect of selenium as a reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenger and its additive effect with basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) on in vitro expansion of amniotic fluid (AF)-MSCs and the paracrine actions of AF-MSC-CM as well as the associated cellular and molecular mechanisms.

Methods: In this study, we obtained CM from human AF-MSCs cultured with selenium.

Hypoxic conditioned medium from human amniotic fluid-derived mesenchymal stem cells accelerates skin wound healing through TGF-β/SMAD2 and PI3K/Akt pathways.

In a previous study, we isolated human amniotic fluid (AF)-derived mesenchymal stem cells (AF-MSCs) and utilized normoxic conditioned medium (AF-MSC-norCM) which has been shown to accelerate cutaneous wound healing. Because hypoxia enhances the wound healing function of mesenchymal stem cell-conditioned medium (MSC-CM), it is interesting to explore the mechanism responsible for the enhancement of wound healing function. In this work, hypoxia not only increased the proliferation of AF-MSCs but also maintained their constitutive characteristics (surface marker expression and differentiation potentials).