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Optimization of Synthetic mRNA for Highly Efficient Translation and its Application in the Generation of Endothelial and Hematopoietic Cells from Human and Primate Pluripotent Stem Cells

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Abstract

Identification of transcription factors that directly convert pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) into endothelial and blood cells and advances in the chemical modifications of messenger RNA (mRNA) offer alternative nucleic acid-based transgene-free approach for scalable production of these cells for drug screening and therapeutic purposes. Here we evaluated the effect of 5′ and 3′ RNA untranslated regions (UTRs) on translational efficiency of chemically-modified synthetic mRNA (modRNA) in human PSCs and showed that an addition of 5′UTR indeed enhanced protein expression. With the optimized modRNAs expressing ETV2 or ETV2 and GATA2, we are able to produce VE-cadherin+ endothelial cells and CD34+CD43+ hematopoietic progenitors, respectively, from human PSCs as well as non-human primate (NHP) PSCs. Overall, our findings provide valuable information on the design of in vitro transcription templates being used in PSCs and its broad applicability for basic research, disease modeling, and regenerative medicine.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Cell Processing and Manipulation Core in the Translational Cores, and Physicians and Nurses at University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center for obtaining and processing bone marrow samples and Translational Research Trials Office for providing the regulatory and administrative support for this endeavor. This work was supported by funds from the National Institute of Health (1R01HL132891, 4R01HL116221, and P51OD011106).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok, 10400, Thailand

    Kran Suknuntha

  2. Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53715, USA

    Kran Suknuntha, Lihong Tao, Vera Brok-Volchanskaya, Saritha S. D’Souza, Akhilesh Kumar & Igor Slukvin

  3. Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53792, USA

    Igor Slukvin

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  1. Kran Suknuntha
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  2. Lihong Tao
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  4. Saritha S. D’Souza
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Contributions

K.S. designed and conducted experiments and wrote the manuscript, L.T. conducted eGFP experiments, V.B.V. conducted hematopoietic developmental assays, S.S.D. conducted NHP-related experiments, A.K. conducted endothelial developmental assays, I.S. conceptualized and supervised all aspects of the studies and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Kran Suknuntha.

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Authors declare no conflict of interest.

Electronic supplementary material

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Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 29 KB)

eGFP expression in non-human primate iPSC

. Bar graph showing eGFP mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) from MnCy0669 iPSC at 24 h after transfection with different eGFP modRNAs. Results are represented as mean ± SD from 3 independent experiments. * indicates significance (TIF 140 KB)

Quantitative PCR analyses of endothelial and hematopoietic genes

. Expression of indicated genes were calculated relative to GAPDH using ΔΔCt method. Results are represented as mean ± SD (n = 3). EC = endothelial cells, 43 + = CD43+ cells, CB = cord blood, BM = bone marrow, MNC = mononuclear cells, HUVEC = human umbilical vein endothelial cells (TIF 2474 KB)

Generation of hematopoietic cells from primate iPSC. A)

Representative picture of day 7 hematopoietic cells (arrow) formation from MnCy0669 iPSC. Flow cytometric histogram showing percentage of CD34 in the floating cell fraction. B) Representative picture of hematopoietic colonies and Wright-stained cytospin from MnCy0669 iPSC. Scale bar = 200 μm (TIF 633 KB)

Supplementary material 5 (DOCX 81 KB)

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Suknuntha, K., Tao, L., Brok-Volchanskaya, V. et al. Optimization of Synthetic mRNA for Highly Efficient Translation and its Application in the Generation of Endothelial and Hematopoietic Cells from Human and Primate Pluripotent Stem Cells. Stem Cell Rev and Rep 14, 525–534 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12015-018-9805-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12015-018-9805-1

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