[Seminar] "Rejuvenated MSC-derived extracellular vesicles from aged donors show enhanced potency in macrophage immunomodulation and wound healing" by Prof. Tomas Skutella

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Thomas Skutella

Talk Title: Rejuvenated MSC-derived extracellular vesicles from aged donors show enhanced potency in macrophage immunomodulation and wound healing

Abstract: 
Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) from aging donors lose regenerative and immunomodulatory potency, and there are no validated measures to distinguish rejuvenated from residual senescence. We reprogrammed bone-marrow MSCs from four adult donors to induced pluripotent stem cells and re-differentiated them under two conditions. iMSCs clustered with MSCs, showed promoter methylation inversely coupled to gene expression, retained residual senescence and desmosome signatures, and their EVs suppressed LPS-induced IL-6 and TNF-α, outperforming EVs from aged MSCs and hiPSCs. iMSC-EVs also promoted endothelial wound closure and gained a distinct protein- and small-RNA cargo signature, including NF-κB-targeting miRNAs and reproducibly reduced piRNAs. The same potency and rejuvenation framework was assessed in vivo in a diabetic wound model. These quality and potency metrics may support release testing and mechanism-guided product development of rejuvenated MSC-derived therapeutics.

Biography:
Prof. Thomas Skutella has completed his MD at the University Clinics Frankfurt a.M., Germany, and postdoctoral studies at Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, Munich, and the Institute of Anatomy, Charite, Berlin. He was group leader in the Neuroscience Research Center , Charite Berlin, director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine, Tübingen, Germany and has been from 2010 head of the department of Neuroanatomy in the Institute for Anatomy and Cell Biology, Heidelberg, Germany.