Skin cells can be turned into neurons, heart muscle, or pancreatic tissue in a dish—but the current method is inefficient and risks causing tumours. This research group aims to engineer safer, more powerful reprogramming factors by identifying the essential parts of natural transcription factors and using them as modular building blocks. The problem is that existing reprogramming technology relies on genes that work poorly in adult cells and can trigger cancer, making it too risky for human therapies. Without better tools, regenerative medicine cannot deliver on its promise of repairing damaged organs or creating personalised cell replacements. If successful, this work could produce custom-made factors that generate large quantities of high-quality cells reliably and safely. That would bring cell therapies for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, or heart damage closer to clinical use. The same approach could also be adapted to create other specialised cell types, like neurons, for research or transplantation. This is fundamental science with a clear translational goal. The immediate output is a set of engineered molecular tools; the long-term impact depends on whether those tools prove effective in patients.
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Converting human cells such as skin to other specialised cells such as neurons, blood, heart, liver and pancreas will make it possible to regenerate any damaged or diseased tissue and develop personalised therapies. It is now possible to reprogram biopsied human cells to become induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) in the laboratory. These iPSCs are pluripotent, which means they can potentially give rise to all cell types of the body. This is a major achievement as it overcomes the limitations of using of embryonic stem cells. However, the current technology uses genes called transcription factors (TFs) that are highly inefficient in reprogramming adult cells and they have been associated with tumours, making this technology quite risky and unreliable to use in human patients. Thus, we urgently need novel methods to reprogram cells in an effective and safe way to generate the quantity and the quality of cells required for therapeutic purposes. We are building a multi-disciplinary research group, bringing together expertise from Stem Cell research, Synthetic Biology and Translational research. The goal of our research is to engineer novel reprogramming factors that can overcome these limitations. To achieve this, we plan to define which parts of natural TFs that are essential for reprogramming. Then, we will use these parts as building blocks to design novel factors that are more potent in reprogramming. We will initially focus on generating iPSCs, but we will use the same strategy to generate other cell types such as neurons. Ultimately, we aim to translate this technology to an effective method in the clinic. It is our expectation that custom-made reprogramming factors will bring regenerative medicine one step closer to reality.
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