Applications of Cell Surface Engineering in Stem Cells

By leveraging the capacity to promote regeneration, stem cell therapies offer enormous hope to overcome diseases that conventional therapy had only limited success. However, because of the insufficient homing and survival of the viable cells with high efficiency to target tissues, the therapeutic efficacy of stem cell therapy is still very low. To address this challenge, scientists have applied cell surface engineering technology to chemically attach cell adhesion molecules to the stem cell surface to improve the homing efficiency of specific tissues.

Importance of Cell Surface Engineering in Stem Cells

Stem cells have various advantages including self-renewal and differentiation ability, autologous source and immune modulator, unlimited source and patient-specific application. However, stem cell therapy shows a very poor efficacy of targeted delivery, retention, and engraftment of injected cells, which still limits the practical applications. Cell surface engineering has developed to be one of the promising solutions to overcome the low therapeutic efficacy of stem cell therapy by introducing artificial active molecules on the cell membrane. It can be applied to various scientific research, including but not limited to:

• Targeted delivery of therapeutic cells to inflammatory lesions.

Cell surface engineering can conjugate active molecules on the cell membrane to enhance the affinity to the target lesion and thus promote the homing efficiency of stem cells to target tissues.

Sarkar et al. developed a simple platform technology to chemically attach sialyl Lewis^x (SLeX) ligand to the surface of MSCs to improve their homing efficiency. They preserved the MSC phenotype and did not perform genetic manipulation to modify the surface of MSCs. The SLeX-conjugated MSCs exhibited a robust rolling response on inflamed endothelium in vivo and homed to inflamed tissue with higher efficiency compared with native MSCs.

Fig.1 Schematic showing the formation of vesicles from biotinylated lipid and modification of MSCs with biotinylated lipid vesicles. (Sarkar, 2010)

• Enhanced cellular function and bioimaging

MSCs have been heavily researched in cell therapy, because they are multipotent, easy to isolate, and excrete beneficial factors. However, in vivo bioimaging information of MSCs represents a significant bottleneck in the translation of new stem-cell-based therapies. Therefore, it is urgent to trace stem cells to determine their fate after implantation. Nanoparticles have emerged as promising cell-labeling tools.

Rosenbrand et al. synthesized lipid and PEG surface-functionalized mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) and modified them to the organic surface of MSCs. They studied the effect of surface functionalization on cell internalization, proliferation, differentiation and cell proteomics in MSCs. MSNs-conjugated MSCs allow for optimized for effective stem cell tracking.

Cell surface engineering can modulate the cellular behavior to enhance the targeted delivery, cellular functions, organized structure, and immune evasion by chemical or physical modification of the cell surface. Driven to increase the therapeutic efficacy of stem cell therapy, Creative Biolabs is dedicated to offering stem cell surface engineering services that can be tailored to modulate stem cell function and interactions. We have developed an impeccable cell surface engineering platform to provide flexible solutions and various conjugates. Please contact us for more detailed information to know how we can help.

References

1. Sarkar, D.; et al. Engineered cell homing. Blood. 2011, 118(25): e184-e191.
2. Sarkar, D.; et al. Engineered mesenchymal stem cells with self-assembled vesicles for systemic cell targeting. Biomaterials. 2010, 31(19): 5266-5274.
3. Rosenbrand, R.; et al. Lipid surface modifications increase mesoporous silica nanoparticle labeling properties in mesenchymal stem cells. International journal of nanomedicine. 2018, 13: 7711.