Events

This event has CPD accreditation

 
9:00 – 9:30  Registration

 
9:30 – 9:40  Introduction by the Chairs: Professor Andrew Baker,
University of Glasgow¸Scotland and Dr Chris Denning, University of Nottingham¸UK

 
Chair: Professor Andrew Baker, University of Glasgow¸Scotland

 
9:40 – 10:25   iPS cell generation

Professor Hans Schöler, Max Planck Institute, Germany

 
10:25 – 10:50 Forebrain progenitors

Nicholas Allen, Cardiff

 
10:50   – 11:00 Speakers Photo

 
11:00 – 11:20 Morning Break                                                    

 
11.20-11.45 
Human ESCs into specific endodermal cell types

Dr Ludvic Vallier, Laboratory for Regenerative medicine, University of Cambridge, UK

Generation of hepatocytes from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) could represent
an advantageous source of cells for cell therapy approaches as alternative to liver transplantation.
However, the generation of hepatocytes from hESCs remains a challenge especially using
conditions compatible with clinical applications. Here, we report a novel method to differentiate
hESCs and hIPSCs into hepatic cells using defined culture system, which recapitulate essential
stages of liver development. Importantly, the cells generated under these conditions exhibited
hepatic functions in vitro and in vivo. Therefore, this approach represents toward the generation
of hESCs derived hepatic cells for cell based therapy.

 
11.45-12.10      Stem cell states and the single cell

                 Professor Peter Andrews, University of Sheffield, UK

After prolonged culture, ES cells are subject to the selection of genetic variants. 
Accumulating evidence suggests that the ‘stem cell compartment’ in both ES and other stem
cells may be composed of distinct substates.  One aspect of culture adaption is that it alters the
population dynamics of ES cultures, particularly affecting the behavior of substates within the
stem cell compartment.  Understanding the nature of these substates may provide insights into
the mechanisms that control self renewal, commitment to differentiation and lineage selection of
ES and, ultimately iPS cells.  Inevitably these same mechanisms may also play a role in cancer
progression

 12.10-12.35          Derivation and utility of cardiomyocytes from human pluripotent stem cells
Dr Chris Denning, University  of Nottingham, UK
We have demonstrated that functional cardiomyocytes can be derived from human embryonic
stem cells, potentially offering a novel cell source for drug screening,
disease modelling and cell replacement. However, before these goals can be realised, several
issues must be tackled. We have sought to standardise feeder-free
culture methods that function in 14 hESC lines derived in 5 different countries, impacting on the
ability to improve downstream technologies. Thus, we have demonstrated
industrial scale automation of hESC culture to meet demands of commerce. Standardised culture
also provides a platform from which differentiation to the cardiac lineage
can be improved and directed. Moreover, high efficiency genetic modification has been
demonstrated in 11 hESC lines, potentially providing new routes to RNAi library screening
 for genome analysis. We have also generated transgenic hESC lines that express
puromycin N-acetyltransferase from the cardiac specific MYH6 promoter, allowing enrichment
 of cardiomyocytes to close to 100% purity by incubation with the antibiotic puromycin.
This set of technologies is now being applied to proof of principle studies in drug screening
 and engineering in vitro disease models produced either by genetic modification or by exploitation
of induced pluripotency (iPS) technology.

 
12.35-13.35          Lunch and poster viewing

 
Chair: Dr Chris Denning, University of Nottingham¸UK

 
13.35-14.00          Humps and Bumps on the road to pluripotency- Dr Majlinda Lako,
Newcastle University, UK    

14.00-14.25          Derivation of induced pluripotent cells from adult dermal fibroblasts in
patients with CVD and controls.
Dr Nicole Kane, University of Glasgow¸Scotland

 

14.25-14.50         Reprogramming: from Technology to Biology

                          Dr Keisuke Kaji, Edinburgh University, Scotland

We have developed a non-viral reprogramming system with multiprotein
expression vector and Piggybac transposon/transposase in 2009. In addition to improving the
strategy, currently we are using the system to understand the mechanism of the reprogramming
process, how the cells go back to the pluripotent state by expression of Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and
c-Myc.                                           

 

14.50-15.20        Afternoon Tea/Coffee

 

15.20-15.45        Synthetic substrates

                        Sue Kimber, Manchester

 

15.45-16.10          Application of induced pluripotent stem cells in modelling human
immunodeficiency disorders

Dr Sayandip Mukherjee, UCL , London            

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells generated from patient samples can potentially
provide a platform for dissecting the molecular mechanisms of inherited disorders, design of
drug screening protocols, and also for testing the efficacy and safety profiles of gene replacement
therapies. We have focussed on chronic granulomatous disorder (CGD) which is a rare inherited
neutrophil disorder and affects four in a million. iPS cells generated from skin biopsies of CGD
patients will be employed for studying the efficacy of lentiviral vectors delivering a codon
optimized gp91phox transgene, and as a proof of principal study to establish their application in
 bone marrow reconstitution experiments in murine models of CGD.

 16.10-16.20          Chairmans’s summing up

 Dont forget to sign up to Euroscicions e-newsletter at www.euroscicon.com/signup.htm
to keep up to date with European Life Science news and events and to be notified of the
follow up to this event

 

About the Chairs
Professor Andrew Baker graduated from the University of London in 1990 with a First Class
BSc (Joint Honours) in pharmacology and toxicology and then studied for his PhD with the
Leukaemia Research Fund at the University of Wales College of Medicine, graduating in 1994.
He then joined the group led by Professor Andrew Newby for his post-doctoral work in Cardiff and
developed adenoviral vectors for gene delivery studies in the cardiovascular system. This was at
the very early stages of gene therapy. Dr. Baker then transferred to a lectureship at the University of
Bristol (Bristol Heart Institute) to continue studies on adenovirus-mediated gene transfer to
assess vascular function in different model systems. At the same time he initiated his
 independent research programmes focusing on how to engineer delivery systems for optimal
use in vivo in gene therapy applications. In 1999, Dr. Baker joined Professor Anna Dominiczak’s
group at the University of Glasgow as a Senior Lecturer in Molecular Medicine, then as Reader
and now as Professor of Molecular Medicine. He is based at the British Heart Foundation
Glasgow Cardiovascular Research Centre (BHF GCRC), which is a translational centre of
excellence with a focus on primary and secondary prevention at cardiovascular disease.

Dr Chris Denning- PhD in Cancer Gene Therapy at Beatson Institute for Cancer Research,
University of Glasgow, 1997; Postdoctoral Research Fellow - gene targeting in mouse ES cells,
Institute for Stem Cell Research, University of Edinburgh, 1997-1998; Postdoctoral Research
Fellow - gene targeting in somatic cells; first targeted gene disruption in animals other than
mouse, Roslin Institute 1998-2001; Principal Investigator, University of Nottingham, 2001-2003;
Medical Research Council Fellow in Stem cell biology, University of Nottingham, 2003-2006;
Lecturer in stem cell biology, University of Nottingham, 2006-2008; Associate Professor &
Reader in stem cell biology, University of Nottingham 2008

About the speakers

Professor Hans Schöler is a Director of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in
 Münster (Germany), Professor of the Medical Faculty of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität
Münster, and Adjunct Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, School of
Veterinary Medicine, Department of Animal Biology in Philadelphia (USA).  Professor Schöler
majored in Biology in Heidelberg (Germany), receiving his diploma in 1982.

In 1985 he was awarded the Ph.D. degree “summa cum laude” at the Center for Molecular Biology in Heidelberg
under supervision of Professor Dr. Peter Gruss. From 1986 until 1988 Professor Schöler was
head of a research group at Boehringer Mannheim (now Roche) in Tutzing, and from 1988 until
1991 he worked as a staff scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in
Göttingen. In 1991 he commenced as head of a research group at the European Molecular
Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg.

In 1999, Professor Schöler moved to the University of
Pennsylvania (USA), where he served as Professor for Reproduction Physiology at the „School of
 Veterinary Medicine“ and Director of the „Center of Animal Transgenesis and Germ Cell Research“.
Professor Schöler returned to Germany in 2004, where he since is director of the Department for
Cell and Developmental Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster.
 

The main research interests of Professor Schöler are molecular biology of cells of the germline
(pluripotent cells and germ cells), transcriptional regulation of genes in the mammalian germline,
molecular development of reprogramming the genome of somatic cells after nuclear transfer into
oocytes or fusion with pluripotent cells.  Since 2005, Professor Schöler is head of the Managing
Board of the Stem Cell Network North Rhine-Westphalia, and he was appointed Representative
  Member in the central ethics committee for stem cell research ("Zentrale Ethik-Kommission für
Stammzellenforschung") in July 2005. In addition, Professor Schöler is a Member of the Scientific
Advisory Board of the GSF National Research Center for Environment and Health since 2006.

Dr Nicole M Kane is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the British Heart Foundation Glasgow
 Cardiovascular Research Centre at the University of Glasgow. Her research is focused on the
 genetic manipulation of human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells to further delineate
 pluripotency and differentiation commitments, in particular to a cardiovascular lineage.

Professor Peter Andrews received his D.Phil from the University of Oxford in 1975.  Following
postdoc positions at the Institut Pasteur in Paris and Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York, he
was a research scientist at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia.  He is currently the Arthur
Jackson Professor of Biomedical Science in the University of Sheffield, where he is also
co-director of the Centre for Stem Cell Biology.  His research has focused both on embryonal carcinoma cells,
the malignant counterparts of embryonic stem (ES) cells, as well as on the biology of human
ES cells themselves.

Dr Keisuke Kaji,obtained his PhD in 2003 at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In the same year
he joined Dr. Brian Hendrich's group in the Institute for Stem Cell Research (ISCR) at the
University of Edinburgh, as a postdoc. he studied the role of Mbd3 and found that the epigenetic
molecule was important for lineage commitment in ES cells and development of pluripotent cells
in peri-implantation mouse embryos. In 2008, He started my own group in the ISCR and developed
a non-viral reprogramming strategy. Currently his group is working to improve the technology and
reveal the mechanism of the reprogramming.

Dr Ludovic Vallier is a member of the Department of Surgery and junior principal investigator in the
newly opened Anne McLaren laboratory for regenerative medicine (LRM, Cambridge). The Vallier
 laboratory study mechanisms controlling differentiation of pluripotent cells pancreas and liver.
 These studies use human Embryonic Stem Cells and human induced pluripotent stem cells as
 an in vitro model of development in combination with functional analyses. Overall, the objective of
the Vallier laboratory objective is not only knowing how to control differentiation of human ESCs
into specific endodermal cell types (including pancreas and liver progenitors), but also to generate
fully functional cell type for clinical applications. hIPSCs and liver metabolic diseases.

This meeting was organised by Euroscicon (www.euroscicon.com), a team  of dedicated
professionals working for the continuous improvement of technical knowledge transfer to all
scientists. Euroscicon believe that they can make a positive difference to the quality of science
by providing cutting edge information on new technological advancements to the scientific
community.  This is provided via our exceptional services to individual scientists, research
institutions and industry.  The event was hosted by 'BioPark (www.biopark.co.uk), a research
and development centre in Welwyn Garden City providing specialist facilities and support for
bioscience and health technology businesses to grow, and to develop new products and
technologies

 
You can network with people from this event at:

Nature network - http://network.nature.com/groups/euroscicon/

Linked In- http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1939569

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=70847076549

Twitter - http://twitter.com/Euroscicon/