Directed differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells into articular cartilage reveals effects caused by absence of WISP3, the gene responsible for progressive pseudorheumatoid arthropathy of childhood

© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2023. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ..

OBJECTIVES: Progressive pseudorheumatoid arthropathy of childhood (PPAC), caused by deficiency of WNT1 inducible signalling pathway protein 3 (WISP3), has been challenging to study because no animal model of the disease exists and cartilage recovered from affected patients is indistinguishable from common end-stage osteoarthritis. Therefore, to gain insights into why precocious articular cartilage failure occurs in this disease, we made in vitro derived articular cartilage using isogenic WISP3-deficient and WISP3-sufficient human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs).

METHODS: We generated articular cartilage-like tissues from induced-(i) PSCs from two patients with PPAC and one wild-type human embryonic stem cell line in which we knocked out WISP3. We compared these tissues to in vitro-derived articular cartilage tissues from two isogenic WISP3-sufficient control lines using histology, bulk RNA sequencing, single cell RNA sequencing and in situ hybridisation.

RESULTS: WISP3-deficient and WISP3-sufficient hPSCs both differentiated into articular cartilage-like tissues that appeared histologically similar. However, the transcriptomes of WISP3-deficient tissues differed significantly from WISP3-sufficient tissues and pointed to increased TGFβ, TNFα/NFκB, and IL-2/STAT5 signalling and decreased oxidative phosphorylation. Single cell sequencing and in situ hybridisation revealed that WISP3-deficient cartilage contained a significantly higher fraction (~4 fold increase, p<0.001) of superficial zone chondrocytes compared with deeper zone chondrocytes than did WISP3-sufficient cartilage.

CONCLUSIONS: WISP3-deficient and WISP3-sufficient hPSCs can be differentiated into articular cartilage-like tissues, but these tissues differ in their transcriptomes and in the relative abundances of chondrocyte subtypes they contain. These findings provide important starting points for in vivo studies when an animal model of PPAC or presymptomatic patient-derived articular cartilage becomes available.

Errataetall:

UpdateOf: bioRxiv. 2023 Apr 03;:. - PMID 37066225

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2023

Erschienen:

2023

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:82

Enthalten in:

Annals of the rheumatic diseases - 82(2023), 12 vom: 07. Dez., Seite 1547-1557

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Li, Chaochang [VerfasserIn]
Alemany-Ribes, Mireia [VerfasserIn]
Raftery, Rosanne M [VerfasserIn]
Nwoko, Uzochi [VerfasserIn]
Warman, Matthew L [VerfasserIn]
Craft, April M [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Arthritis
Arthritis, Rheumatoid
Child
Chondrocytes
Journal Article
Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 13.11.2023

Date Revised 19.11.2023

published: Print-Electronic

UpdateOf: bioRxiv. 2023 Apr 03;:. - PMID 37066225

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1136/ard-2023-224304

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM361766386