The human immune system is comprised of many different types of cells that all function, in different ways, to protect the body from infection and disease. There are many types of diseases that directly target or affect the human immune system. The list of such diseases includes AIDS, severe combined immunodeficiency, agammaglobulinemia, as well as other conditions that are the consequences of radiation, chemotherapy, burns, or other infections. Since the immune system is the key component protecting the body from infection, it is important that the various parts of the immune system function proficiently. There are a number of therapies that are designed to treat defects in the immune system. One such therapy involves the use of hematopoietic stem cells taken from the bone marrow or peripheral blood and then transplanted into the recipient patient. However, there are a number of important issues with these strategies that limit their success, including immune rejection by or against the transplanted cells. Further, the ability to obtain large quantities of transplantable cells to allow multiple treatments or cell manipulation is limited.
Human embryonic stem cells (hESC) have the ability to develop into any cell in the body, including those of the of the immune system. Because of this they hold a great amount of promise in developing approaches for treating and manipulating various types of immune defects. Hematopoietic stem cells derived from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) could potentially provide such tissue to allow immune “matching” to the recipient, thus eliminating immune rejection. Further, hESCs could potentially allow infinite expansion of these cells and permit “tailoring” of the cells to regenerate defects in the immune response. Our proposal seeks to investigate the potential of hESC in forming functional immune cells. I t is necessary to closely examine the ability of hESC to become immune cells before a therapy can be developed.
Due to the fact that experimental transplantation of stem cells into human recipients is not feasible, there has been a strong interest in developing model systems to study the human immune response using a surrogate host. One such system has been developed using immunocompromised mice. Previous studies have shown that hematopoietic stem cells taken from human cord blood are capable of forming mature human immune cells in these mice. We propose to examine and compare the ability of hESCs to the ability of other hematopoietic stem cells to become mature human immune cells in the mice. We will further examine the ability of these cells to respond to infection with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), which is a virus that infects both humans and mice and is widely used to study immune responses. These studies should provide insight into the feasibility of hESC-based therapies to regenerate human immune responses for a wide variety of diseases.
There are a number of diseases of the human immune system that would benefit from the development of new type of therapy. Such diseases include cancer, AIDS, SCID, allergy and other types of infections and non-infectious conditions. There are a number of therapies that are designed to treat defects in the immune system and there is a high demand for the development of more effective therapies. While exact numbers are difficult to attain, over 100,000 people undergo immune-suppressive therapy (radiation or chemotherapy) in the state of California each year. In roughly half of the patients undergoing stem cell transplantation procedures, the current stem cell transplantation methods are ineffective. Further, a recent study by the University of California estimated that 151,000 people in California were infected with HIV. While current drug regimes treating HIV are allowing greater survival, they are far from a cure. California is in the unique position to take the lead in therapies developed using human embryonic stem cells (hESC). Our proposal seeks to utilize the resources of the CIRM to investigate the potential of hESC in forming functional immune cells. These studies could lead to the development and understanding of the feasibility and the conditions that are necessary to develop a therapy that uses hESCs to treat a variety of defects in the immune response. This would greatly benefit the citizens of California that are directly affected by these conditions and help push California to the forefront in developing the state of the art hESC based therapies.