iPS repgrogramming from peripheral blood in Cardiovascular Medicine

We have traditionally used skin fibroblasts as the starting patient material for in vitro reprogramming to the iPS state but this requires a skin biopsy and subsequent time in culture to allow fibroblast outgrowth. Reprogramming peripheral blood is possible, but the best UK effort requires 60ml starting material which is not practical in most circumstances, and not possible in pediatric populations. This previous award allowed us to explore how to reprogram low volumes of peripheral human blood. Ultimately we were able to effectively progress the methodology to generate thousands of clones from 1ml of frozen adult blood.

Publications linked to this award:

1. Chang YF, Broyles CN, Brook FA, Davies MJ, Turtle CW, et al. (2017) Non-invasive phenotyping and drug testing in single cardiomyocytes or beta-cells by calcium imaging and optogenetics. PLOS ONE 12(4): e0174181. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174181
2. Robinson, P., Sparrow, A., Broyles, C., Sievert, K., Chang, Y., Brook, F., Zhang, X., Watkins, H., Abassi, Y., Geeves, M., Redwood, C. and Daniels, M. (2018). Measurement of myofilament calcium in living cardiomyocytes using a targeted genetically encoded indicator. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/26800