FY08 LDRD Final Report Stem Cell Fate Decisions

[摘要] A detailed understanding of the biological control of fate decisions of stem and progenitor cells is needed to harness their full power for tissue repair and/or regeneration. Currently, internal and external factors that regulate stem cell fate are not fully understood. We aim to engineer biocompatible tools to facilitate the measurement and comparison of the roles and significance of immobilized factors such as extracellular matrix and signaling peptides, synergistic and opposing soluble factors and signals, and cell-to-cell communication, in stem cell fate decisions. Our approach is based on the development of cell microarrays to capture viable stem/progenitor cells individually or in small clusters onto substrate-bound signals (e.g. proteins), combined with conventional antibody and customized subcellular markers made in-house, to facilitate tracking of cell behavior during exposure to relevant signals. Below we describe our efforts, including methods to manipulate a model epithelial stem cell system using a custom subcellular reporter to track and measure cell signaling, arrays with surface chemistry that support viable cells and enable controlled presentation of immobilized signals to cells on the array and fluorescence-based measurement of cell response, and successful on-array tests via conventional immunofluorescence assays that indicate correct cell polarity, localization of junctional proteins, and phenotype, properties which are essential to measuring true cell responses.

[发布日期] 2009-03-02

[学科分类] 生物科学（综合）

[关键词] CHEMISTRY;ENGINEERS;PEPTIDES;PHENOTYPE;PROTEINS;REGENERATION;REPAIR;STEM CELLS