Comparing preprocessing strategies for 3D-Gene microarray data of extracellular vesicle-derived miRNAs.

Background: Extracellular vesicle-derived (EV)-miRNAs have potential to serve as biomarkers for the diagnosis of various diseases. miRNA microarrays are widely used to quantify circulating EV-miRNA levels, and the preprocessing of miRNA microarray data is critical for analytical accuracy and reliability. Thus, although microarray data have been used in various studies, the effects of preprocessing have not been studied for Toray's 3D-Gene chip, a widely used measurement method.

Prediction of antibody production performance change in Chinese hamster ovary cells using morphological profiling.

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) represent a significant segment of biopharmaceuticals, with the market for mAb therapeutics expected to reach $200 billion in 2021. Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells are the industry standard for large-scale mAb production owing to their adaptability and genetic engineering capabilities. However, maintaining consistent product quality is challenging, primarily because of the inherent genetic instability of CHO cells.

Morphology-based noninvasive early prediction of serial-passage potency enhances the selection of clone-derived high-potency cell bank from mesenchymal stem cells.

Background: Rapidly expanding clones (RECs) are one of the single-cell-derived mesenchymal stem cell clones sorted from human bone marrow mononuclear cells (BMMCs), which possess advantageous features. The RECs exhibit long-lasting proliferation potency that allows more than 10 repeated serial passages in vitro, considerably benefiting the manufacturing process of allogenic MSC-based therapeutic products. Although RECs aid the preparation of large-variation clone libraries for a greedy selection of better-quality clones, such a selection is only possible by establishing multiple-candidate cell banks for quality comparisons.

Myc Supports Self-Renewal of Basal Cells in the Esophageal Epithelium.

It is widely believed that cellular senescence plays a critical role in both aging and cancer, and that senescence is a fundamental, permanent growth arrest that somatic cells cannot avoid. Here we show that Myc plays an important role in self-renewal of esophageal epithelial cells, contributing to their resistance to cellular senescence. Myc is homogeneously expressed in basal cells of the esophageal epithelium and Myc positively regulates their self-renewal by maintaining their undifferentiated state.

Predicting quality decay in continuously passaged mesenchymal stem cells by detecting morphological anomalies.

With rapid advances in cell therapy, technologies enabling both consistency and efficiency in cell manufacturing are becoming necessary. Morphological monitoring allows practical quality maintenance in cell manufacturing facilities, but relies heavily on human skill. For more reproducible and data-driven quality evaluation, image-based morphological analysis provides multiple advantages over manual observation.

Reproducible production and image-based quality evaluation of retinal pigment epithelium sheets from human induced pluripotent stem cells.

Transplantation of retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) sheets derived from human induced pluripotent cells (hiPSC) is a promising cell therapy for RPE degeneration, such as in age-related macular degeneration. Current RPE replacement therapies, however, face major challenges. They require a tedious manual process of selecting differentiated RPE from hiPSC-derived cells, and despite wide variation in quality of RPE sheets, there exists no efficient process for distinguishing functional RPE sheets from those unsuitable for transplantation.