Young glial progenitor cells competitively replace aged and diseased human glia in the adult chimeric mouse brain

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelForskningfagfællebedømt

Competition among adult brain cells has not been extensively researched. To investigate whether healthy glia can outcompete diseased human glia in the adult forebrain, we engrafted wild-type (WT) human glial progenitor cells (hGPCs) produced from human embryonic stem cells into the striata of adult mice that had been neonatally chimerized with mutant Huntingtin (mHTT)-expressing hGPCs. The WT hGPCs outcompeted and ultimately eliminated their human Huntington’s disease (HD) counterparts, repopulating the host striata with healthy glia. Single-cell RNA sequencing revealed that WT hGPCs acquired a YAP1/MYC/E2F-defined dominant competitor phenotype upon interaction with the host HD glia. WT hGPCs also outcompeted older resident isogenic WT cells that had been transplanted neonatally, suggesting that competitive success depended primarily on the relative ages of competing populations, rather than on the presence of mHTT. These data indicate that aged and diseased human glia may be broadly replaced in adult brain by younger healthy hGPCs, suggesting a therapeutic strategy for the replacement of aged and diseased human glia.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftNature Biotechnology
ISSN1087-0156
DOI
StatusE-pub ahead of print - 2024

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
We thank M. Windrem and J. Brickman for early advice on the experimental design; X. Liu and D. Chandler-Militello for technical support in the derivation of hGPCs; L. Zou, D. Kesmen, E.T. Pedersen, D. Bombar and C. Mangiamele for technical support in histological processing and analysis; C. Long and the University of Rochester Genomics Research Center for bioinformatics support; D. Xue for illustration and M. Nedergaard for her comments on the paper. This work was supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Lundbeck Foundation, the Olav Thon Foundation and the Adelson Medical Research Foundation.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).

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