Establishment of porcine induced pluripotent stem cells

Jenn-Rong Yang

　　The purpose of this study is to establish and study pluripotency, efficiency of embryoid body formation, and potency of differentiation of porcine induced pluripotent stem (piPS) cells. The results showed that the morphology of porcine ear fibroblasts were transformed into colony type from spindle type one month after infection with defined factors of Oct4, Sox2, Klf, and c-Myc. After co-cultured with STO cells, typical colony morphology of stem cells was found. The piPS cells expressed pluripotent cellular markers including Oct-4, AP, SSEA-3, SSEA-4, TRA-1-60, and TRA-1-81 antigens. The efficiency of embryoid body formation of pips cells was excellent when induced by using hanging drop method. The karyotype of the piPS cells was also normal (36+XY). In addition, transplantation of piPS cells into NOD-SCID mice resulted teratomas .Various differentiated cells were found in the teratoma, such as neural cells, keratinocytes, adipose cells, skeletal muscle cells, smooth muscle cells, cartilage, and gland-like cells. These results demonstrated that the piPS cells established in this study were pluripotent. This technique is a powerful tool for the study of patient-specific cell therapy and for the transplantation study of Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injury in the future. We hope this piPS cells could apply in the realm of biomedicine and human disease study and contribute to the biomedicine research of neural degeneration and neural injury.