Analysis of iPS cells derived from human conjunctive cells

2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24791836
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Ophthalmology
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: INOUE Tatsuya 東京大学, 医学部附属病院, 助教 (80348721)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2014-03-31
• Keywords: 眼細胞生物学 / iPS細胞

Research Abstract

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells were initially generated from human dermal fibroblasts. Although previous studies have shown that iPS cells can be generated from different tissues, it remains elusive that iPS cells derived from different tissues represent diverse characteristics.
First, we generated human conjunctive cell-derived iPS cells by introducing four specific factors. As previously reported, conjunctive cell-derived iPS cells and dermal fibroblast-derived iPS cells were induced toward retinal neurons, respectively. Next we performed RT-PCR analysis to test the efficiency of retinal determination. Pax6 and Rx expression are significantly increased two weeks after retinal induction in both cells. We also found that Crx, photoreceptor cell marker, were up-regulated at this stage. However, expression of the genes was not significantly different between two cell lines. Further investigations are required for understanding the property of conjunctive cell-derived iPS cells.