The creation of cellular reprogramming technology provides a powerful weapon for scientific research and medical treatment. Scientists are able to use this new technology to create an entirely new cell state that does not occur during natural cell development, independent of any physiological factors, raising expectations for cell therapy and regenerative medicine. The first step in generating iPS cells is to obtain a human sample and isolate suitable somatic cells. Although iPS cells can be obtained from cells of multiple human tissues by reprogramming, most methods of obtaining samples such as skin biopsies are invasive, making it difficult to collect samples.
Urine, which is closely related to human metabolism, contains some cells shed from animal (including human) tissues (mainly kidneys) that can be extracted and reprogrammed into iPS cells. In a new study, researchers found that the urine of premature infants even contained kidney stem cells without going through the intermediate stage of iPS cells. Thus, by simply isolating kidney stem cells directly from urine, they can be proliferated in vitro and potentially used in regenerative medicine to treat kidney-related diseases.
Fig.1 Reprogramming of urine cells and differentiation of UiPSCs. (Huang, 2020)
Our Services
Creative Bioarray has developed a standardized urine cell reprogramming service and we have developed multiple strategies to avoid viral infection, exogenous gene insertion, contamination of animal-derived feeder layers and culture media during reprogramming to ensure the safety of human iPS cells for disease treatment. We offer several types of urine cell reprogramming services to our clients.
- Reprogramming Renal Tubular Cells into iPSCs
- Reprogramming Urinary Cells into Neural Progenitor Cells
- Reprogramming Urinary Cells into Neurons
- Reprogramming Urinary Cells into β cells
- Reprogramming Urinary Cells into Myogenic cells
- Reprogramming Urinary Cells into Hepatocyte-like cells
Service procedure
Applications
The focus of the urine cell reprogramming service is applied to build human disease models, including diseases caused by genetic mutations, such as hereditary Parkinson's disease, autism and other neurological diseases, and various cardiovascular diseases like cardiomyopathy and arrhythmia. This innovative disease model can reproduce the disease process and help researchers to study the disease mechanism in-depth, so as to better formulate the symptomatic treatment plan.
Advantages
- Simple, reproducible, and noninvasive way for generating iPSCs from urine cells.
- The use of urine cells to induce pluripotent stem cells is cost-effective and suitable for applications of all ages, genders and ethnicities.
- The procedure we established is rapid and reproducible, and the resulting induced pluripotent stem cells exhibit excellent differentiation capacity.
As a leading biological company in the field of cell reprogramming, Creative Bioarray provides one-stop scientific services for researchers, including urine cell separation and culture, urine cell reprogramming and cell characterization services. Our efficient and extensive research system will help you accelerate your research progress. If you are interested, please contact us directly.
References
- Huang, P.; et al. Urine-derived induced pluripotent stem cells in cardiovascular disease. Cardiology research and practice. 2020, 2020(2):1-8.
- Wang, L.; et al. Generation of integration-free neural progenitor cells from cells in human urine. Nature methods. 2013, 10(1): 84-89.