Induction of neural differentiation of iPS cell-derived neural stem cells and transplantation into guinea pig cochlea

Article information
Transplantation of neurons derived from human iPS cells cultured on collagen matrix into guinea-pig cochleae.
Ishikawa M, Ohnishi H, Skerleva D, Sakamoto T, Yamamoto N, Hotta A, Ito J, Nakagawa T.
J Tissue Eng Regen Med. 2017 Jun;11(6):1766-1778. PMID: 26205474

Overview
Sensory hearing loss is a common disease that affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide; this condition is known to be caused primarily by the dysfunction of the cochlea in the inner ear.

Currently, for advanced to severe loss of sensitive hearing, there is no other option but treatment with a cochlear implant that stimulates spiral ganglion cells through electrodes. However, this treatment has low efficacy in patients whose spiral ganglion cells have not maintained their function. Therefore, in order to evaluate the possibility of functional recovery by iPS cell-derived nerve cell transplantation, the authors tested the conditions needed for the induction of differentiation of iPS cell-derived neurons, including subsequent transplantation of the resulting neurons into the guinea pig ear.

The authors succeeded in inducing the differentiation of iPS cells into neurons that did not contain undifferentiated cells; this result is important because undifferentiated cells may have tumorigenicity.

In addition, transplantation of the resulting differentiated cell into the guinea pig cochlea using the collagen sponge Honeycomb showed that cells engrafted without causing apparent inflammation.