Rapid production of HUMAN MAST CELLS

Informazioni relative al progetto

MASTFAST

ID dell’accordo di sovvenzione: 768728

DOI

10.3030/768728

Progetto chiuso

Data della firma CE 21 Novembre 2017

Data di avvio 1 Dicembre 2017

Data di completamento 31 Maggio 2019

Finanziato da

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Costo totale

€ 148 914,00

Contributo UE

€ 148 914,00

Coordinato da

THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MASTFAST (Rapid production of HUMAN MAST CELLS)

Periodo di rendicontazione: 2017-12-01 al 2019-05-31

Sintesi del contesto e degli obiettivi generali del progetto

In this ERC Proof-of-Concept project we developed a novel method for rapid production of human mast cells. Mast cells (MC) are tissue resident immune cells with a key role in normal health processes, such as in inflammation and defense against pathogens. However, a broad range of common severe disorders such as allergies, autoimmune diseases, asthma or mastocytosis are caused by mast cell dysfunction. Treatments to counteract the damaging effects of mast cells are limited and the development of new drugs is hampered due to the difficulties in efficiently obtaining human mast cells for biomedical research. We previously discovered a culture method with genetically engineered mouse pluripotent stem cells (PSC) by which a large number of mouse mast cells could be rapidly produced. The ERC PoC project translated the mouse methodology to human mast cell production. In this project we engineered human pluripotent stem cells, demonstrated that human mast cells can be produced by the translational methodology in a human cell-only co-culture system, and successfully achieved optimization of the culture procedure to produce phenotypic human mast cells within a shorter period of time than previously reported. This procedure was written into a patent application, and further human mast cell functional validation and optimization experiments are underway to facilitate commercial interest.