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Differentiation of pluripotent stem cells to muscle fiber to model Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Nature Biotechnology volume 33, pages 962–969 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

During embryonic development, skeletal muscles arise from somites, which derive from the presomitic mesoderm (PSM). Using PSM development as a guide, we establish conditions for the differentiation of monolayer cultures of mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells into PSM-like cells without the introduction of transgenes or cell sorting. We show that primary and secondary skeletal myogenesis can be recapitulated in vitro from the PSM-like cells, providing an efficient, serum-free protocol for the generation of striated, contractile fibers from mouse and human pluripotent cells. The mouse ES cells also differentiate into Pax7+ cells with satellite cell characteristics, including the ability to form dystrophin+ fibers when grafted into muscles of dystrophin-deficient mdx mice, a model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Fibers derived from ES cells of mdx mice exhibit an abnormal branched phenotype resembling that described in vivo, thus providing an attractive model to study the origin of the pathological defects associated with DMD.

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Figure 1: Molecular profiling of early stages of paraxial mesoderm differentiation.
Figure 2: In vitro differentiation of ES cells toward a PSM-like fate.
Figure 3: Differentiation of multinucleated striated muscle fibers and associated Pax7+ cells from mouse ES cells in vitro.
Figure 4: Graft of purified Pax7+ cells differentiated in vitro into adult mdx muscles.
Figure 5: Muscle fibers differentiated in vitro from dystrophin-deficient mdx ES cells show an abnormal branching phenotype.
Figure 6: Myogenic differentiation of human iPS cells.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. Henderson, K. Hnia, M. Knockaert and members of the Pourquié laboratory for comments. We are grateful to J. Pace, T. Knauer-Meyer, G. Vilhais-Neto, and M. McLaird for help. We thank C. Ebel, C. Thibault-Carpentier, A. Magloth-Roth and the Imaging Facility. We thank the microinjection and phenotyping teams of the Mouse Clinical Institute. We thank M. Durnin from the Stowers Institute Cell Culture and Animal Facilities. This work was supported by an advanced grant from the European Research Council to O.P., by the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, by the FP7 EU grant Plurimes (agreement no. 602423) and by a strategic grant from the French Muscular Dystrophy Association (AFM) to O.P. The Venus Plasmid was a kind gift of A. Miyawaki. The anti-Tbx6 antibody was a kind gift of Y. Saga51.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (IGBMC), CNRS (UMR 7104), Inserm U964, Université de Strasbourg, Illkirch Graffenstaden, France

    Jérome Chal, Masayuki Oginuma, Ziad Al Tanoury, Bénédicte Gobert, Olga Sumara, Yasmine Zidouni, Caroline Mursch, Philippe Moncuquet, Olivier Tassy, Stéphane Vincent, Ayako Miyanari, Agata Bera, Jean-Marie Garnier, Leif Kennedy, Thomas Cherrier & Olivier Pourquié

  2. Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, Missouri, USA

    Jérome Chal & Olivier Pourquié

  3. Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Jérome Chal, Getzabel Guevara, Marie Hestin & Olivier Pourquié

  4. Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Jérome Chal, Getzabel Guevara, Marie Hestin & Olivier Pourquié

  5. Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Jérome Chal, Getzabel Guevara, Marie Hestin & Olivier Pourquié

  6. Anagenesis Biotechnologies, Parc d'innovation, Illkirch Graffenstaden, France

    Aurore Hick & Fanny Bousson

  7. UPMC Paris 06, UMRS 787, INSERM, Avenir team, Pitié-Salpêtrière, Paris, France.,

    Shinichiro Hayashi, Bernadette Drayton & Frédéric Relaix

  8. Institut de Myologie, Paris, France

    Shinichiro Hayashi, Bernadette Drayton & Frédéric Relaix

  9. Institut Pasteur, CNRS URA 2578, Paris, France

    Barbara Gayraud-Morel & Shahragim Tajbakhsh

  10. Division of Genetics and Genomics Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Emanuela Gussoni

  11. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Kansas City, Missouri, USA

    Olivier Pourquié

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  1. Jérome Chal
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Contributions

J.C. designed and performed experiments, analyzed data and coordinated the project. M.O. performed the PSM microdissection series. Z.A.T. transposed the differentiation protocol to hiPS cells and characterized the human cultures with help from C.M. and B.G. B.G., A.M. and G.G. carried out most of the mouse ES cell differentiation experiments, and M.H. carried out hiPS cell and hES cell experiments, under J.C.'s supervision. O.S. validated the Myog-repV line. A.H. helped coordinate experiments. F.B. contributed to hiPS cell culture and differentiation. Y.Z. helped develop the serum-free protocol. P.M. and O.T. helped with microarray data analysis. T.C. helped analyze mdx cultures. A.B. contributed experimentally to the early project. L.K. provided technical support. J.-M.G. generated reporter constructs. S.H., B.D. and F.R. provided the Pax3-GFP ES cells. B.G.-M. and S.T. provided expertise and the Pax7-GFP ES cells. S.V. helped establish mdx ES cells. E.G. provided Rag1-mdx mice and performed transplantation. O.P. conceived and supervised the overall project. O.P. and J.C. performed the final data analysis and wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Olivier Pourquié.

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Competing interests

The work described in this article is partially covered by patent application no. PCT/EP2012/066793 (publication no. WO2013030243 A1). O.P. and J.C. are co-founders and shareholders of Anagenesis Biotechnologies, a startup company specializing in production of muscle cells in vitro for cell therapy and drug screening.

Integrated supplementary information

Supplementary Figure 1 Generation of a database of gene expression profiles in the differentiating PSM

Top: Histograms representing expression profiles (generated as described in Fig 1b) of genes associated to major signaling pathways involved in PSM patterning and differentiation. Bottom: schematic representation of the signaling gradients and of the major posterior paraxial mesoderm domains (color-coded) identified by clustering analysis (Fig 1d). Orange bar marks the determination front level where cells acquire their segmental identity.

Supplementary Figure 2 Microarrays Gene signature expression analysis in M+ and P+ differentiated in CDL medium

(a) Fold change versus Fold change (FcFc) scatter plot comparing FACS-sorted M+ cells differentiated for 4 days in CDL medium to ES cells and posterior PSM microarrays to ES cells microarray expression data sets (Multiplot, GenePattern). The ratio of expression for each probesets and for each comparison is plotted on x axis and y axis, respectively (Fold Change, logarithmic scale). Probesets (about 3,400) with a t-test p <0.05 (Figure 1e) are shown. Known signature genes specific for the posterior PSM are highlighted in green (b) FcFc scatter plot comparing FACS-sorted P+ cells differentiated for 6 days in CDL medium to ES cells and anterior PSM microarrays to ES cells microarray expression data sets (Multiplot, GenePattern). The ratio of expression for each probesets for each comparison is plotted on x axis and y axis, respectively (Fold Change, logarithmic scale). Probesets (about 3,400) with a t-test p <0.05 (Figure 1e) are shown. Known signature genes specific for the anterior PSM are highlighted in blue. (c) FcFc scatter plot comparing microarray expression data sets of FACS-sorted P+ and M+ cells differentiated in CDL medium and P+ and M+ cells differentiated in RDL medium (Multiplot, GenePattern). The ratio of expression for each probesets for each comparison were plotted on x axis and y axis (Fold Change, logarithmic scale). Probesets (about 3,400) with a t-test p <0.05 (Figure 1e) are shown. Known signature genes specific for the posterior (green) and anterior (blue) PSM are highlighted.

Supplementary Figure 3 Membrane integrity of mdx muscle fibers differentiated in vitro.

Control (a, b) and mdx myofibers (c, d) cultures stained with Evans blue dye (EBD) with and without prior membrane permeabilization with saponin. Scale bar 200 µm

Supplementary Figure 4 Comparison of differentiation efficiency with the Shelton et al, (2014) protocol

hiPS cells were differentiated either according the protocol described in this study, (Chal et al, 2015) or according to Shelton et al, 2014.; for 4 weeks (a) and 6-7 weeks (b) respectively. (a) Side by side comparison of 4 -weeks old cultures stained for fast MyHC (upper panels), and MyHC (MF20, red) /Pax7 (green) (lower panels). Cell distributions (DAPI staining, blue) are shown for each field as an upper right corner inset. Scale bar is 500μm. (b) 6-7 weeks old culture stained for Fast MyHC, at lower (upper panels, counterstained with DAPI) and higher (lower panels) magnifications. Scale bars are 400 and 100μm, respectively.

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Chal, J., Oginuma, M., Al Tanoury, Z. et al. Differentiation of pluripotent stem cells to muscle fiber to model Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Nat Biotechnol 33, 962–969 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3297

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