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Isolation of human iPS cells using EOS lentiviral vectors to select for pluripotency

Nature Methods volume 6, pages 370–376 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells may be of use in regenerative medicine. However, the low efficiency of reprogramming is a major impediment to the generation of patient-specific iPS cell lines. Here we report the first selection system for the isolation of human iPS cells. We developed the EOS (Early Transposon promoter and Oct-4 (Pou5f1) and Sox2 enhancers) lentiviral vector to specifically express in mouse and human embryonic stem cells but not in primary fibroblasts. The bicistronic EOS vector marked emerging mouse and human iPS cell colonies with EGFP, and we used puromycin selection to aid the isolation of iPS cell lines that expressed endogenous pluripotency markers. These lines differentiated into cell types from all three germ layers. Reporter expression was extinguished upon differentiation and therefore monitored the residual pluripotent cells that form teratomas. Finally, we used EOS selection to establish Rett syndrome–specific mouse and human iPS cell lines with known mutations in MECP2.

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Figure 1: EOS lentiviral vectors in mouse ES cells.
Figure 2: EOS lentiviral vectors in human ES cells.
Figure 3: EOS lentiviral vector in reprogrammed mouse iPS cells.
Figure 4: EOS lentiviral vector in reprogrammed human iPS cells.
Figure 5: EOS lentiviral vector in Rett syndrome–specific mouse and human iPS cell lines.

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Acknowledgements

We thank H.R. Schöler (Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine) for providing Oct-4 promoter plasmid, T. Kitamura (Institute of Medical Science, University of Tokyo) for Plat-E cells, B. Alman and A. Lin for human fibroblast isolation and I.H. Park for advice on human iPS cell isolation. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of T. Thompson at the Ontario Human iPS Cell Facility, SickKids The Centre for Applied Genomics Facility, SickKids ES Facility, SickKids Flow Facility and the Centre for Modeling Human Disease pathology core. This work was supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MOP-10825 to D.L.M., MOP-77803 to J.R., MOP-81129 and IG1-94505 to J.E., and RMF-92090 to J.E. and D.L.M.), the Stem Cell Network (to J.R., M.B. and J.E.), the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation (to J.R. and J.E. for the Ontario Human IPS Cell Facility), and the International Rett Syndrome Foundation (to J.E.). A.H. is supported by a Restracomp Award from SickKids Hospital, A.Y.L.C. by a Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, N.F. by an Ontario Council of Graduate Studies Master's Autism Scholars Award and the Ontario Student Opportunity Trust Funds Hayden Hantho Award and C.A.S. by the Stem Cell Network and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

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Author notes

  1. Kausalia Vijayaragavan, Cheryle A Séguin & Jonathan S Draper

    Present address: Present addresses: Department of Regenerative Cardiology, Fundación Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III, Madrid, Spain (K.V.), Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada (C.A.S.) and McMaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute, Michael G. DeGroote Centre for Learning and Discovery, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (J.S.D.).,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Program, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Akitsu Hotta, Aaron Y L Cheung, Natalie Farra, Cheryle A Séguin, Jonathan S Draper, Peter Pasceri, Janet Rossant & James Ellis

  2. Ontario Human iPS Cell Facility, SickKids, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Akitsu Hotta, Cheryle A Séguin, Janet Rossant & James Ellis

  3. Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Aaron Y L Cheung, Natalie Farra, Janet Rossant & James Ellis

  4. and Department of Biochemistry, McMaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute, Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

    Kausalia Vijayaragavan & Mickie Bhatia

  5. and Department of Medical Genetics, Terry Fox Laboratory, British Columbia Cancer Agency, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Irina A Maksakova & Dixie L Mager

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Contributions

A.H., D.L.M. and J.E. conceived the project; I.A.M. provided reagents; A.H., M.B., J.R. and J.E. designed experiments; A.H. developed the EOS vectors and performed the iPS cell reprogramming experiments; A.Y.L.C. and N.F. performed the Rett syndrome iPS cell experiments; K.V. and J.S.D. performed the hES cell experiments; C.A.S. and P.P. performed the teratoma experiments; A.H., J.R., M.B. and J.E. wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to James Ellis.

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Supplementary Figures 1–12, Supplementary Tables 1 and 2 (PDF 4397 kb)

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Hotta, A., Cheung, A., Farra, N. et al. Isolation of human iPS cells using EOS lentiviral vectors to select for pluripotency. Nat Methods 6, 370–376 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1325

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