Canine Pluripotent Stem Cells: Preclinical Model for Stem Cell Based Regenerative Medicine

Due to the unique similarity to human physiology, biochemistry, and pathology for many diseases, canine breeds have been applied to preclinical research into human medicine for several decades. Since 2006, the discovery of induced pluripotent stem cell technology set the stage for the patient specific stem cell-based therapy. To evaluate the safety and efficacy of this potential therapeutic strategy, a growing body of studies on the generation and differentiation of canine induced pluripotent stem cells (ciPSCs) have been reported. In this review, the current progress from the ciPSCs studies will be described. Additionally, the unique regulatory mechanism(s) for pluripotency maintenance with in canine pluripotent stem cells will be discussed and compared with those in mouse and human. *Corresponding author: Jiesi Luo, Yale Cardiovascular Research Center, Section of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA, E-mail: jiesi.luo@yale.edu Received Date: October 26, 2016 Accepted Date: December 24, 2016 Published Date: January 03, 2017 Citation: Luo, J. Canine Pluripotent Stem Cells: Preclinical Model for Stem Cell Based Regenerative Medicine. (2017) Cell Immunol Serum Biol 3(1): 8792. Cell Immunol Serum Biol | volume 3: issue 1 www.ommegaonline. org Regenerative medicine During the past decade, the birth and exponential growth of the regenerative medicine research field has been witnessed[1]. Defined by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), regenerative medicine is aiming at “replace, repair, and regenerate cells, tissues and organs in order to restore biological function that has been halted or compromised by injury or disease”[2]. One of the basic requirements to achieve this goal is the access to an unlimited source of somatic cell of all differentiated types. Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), holding the capacity of self-renewal and three-germ-layer differentiation, appears to be the most suitable for this mission. The application of PSCs is believed to promote the development of specific cell culture and differentiation techniques, and will eventually push the regenerative medicine field to move forward. The versatility of PSCs is such that they can potentially generate functional tissues or even organs in vitro. This extraordinary progress has set the stage for conducting preclinical evaluation of PSC-related regenerative medicine. One well-characterized type of the PSCs is embryonic stem cells (ESC). These cells were initially isolated from mouse and human preimplantation embryos[3,4]. ESCs provide the basis upon which therapies for diseases, especially those previously thought to be incurable, are developed. However, among the hurdles that must be solved before this therapy is applied in Canine Pluripotent Stem Cells: Preclinical Model for Stem Cell Based Regenerative Medicine Copyrights: © 2017 Luo, J. This is an Open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 87 Yale Cardiovascular Research Center, Section of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, Yale University, USA Luo, J the clinic, is the problem of tissue immune-compatibility[3,5-8]. Response to minor histocompatibility can be ameliorated by immunosuppressive therapy, but it was reported that in human interleukin antigen (HLA)-identical sibling bone marrow transplantation, combinations of multiple minor histocompatibility resource were a significant cause of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), which occurs in approximately 40% of total patients[9]. Examples of minor histocompatibility antigens that trigger hematopoietic stem cell transplant rejection and GVHD include peptides derived from HA-1, and the male H-Y gene product which can be recognized by female immune cells as foreign, as well as mitochondrial gene products[9]. Therefore, the optimum transplanted cells remain to be the autologous cell resource derived from the patient[10]. However, with the breakthrough of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) in 2006, mouse and human immuno-compatible PSCs can be produced. An iPSC is a PSC generated by over expressing a set of pluripotency-related transcription factors, (e.g. OCT-3/4, SOX2, KLF4 and c-MYC; OKSM or Yamanaka factors), in somatic cells[10]. iPSCs are similar to ESCs in morphology, marker expression profile and differentiation potential even though the subtle discrepancies were reported in terms of mutational load and epigenetic profiles[11,12]. To date, successful generation of iPSCs has been reported in species such as mouse, human, rat, rhesus monkey, pig, cow and DOI: 10.15436/2471-5891.17. 004