Chemical transdifferentiation: closer to regenerative medicine

Abstract

Cell transdifferentiation, which directly switches one type of differentiated cells into another cell type, is more advantageous than cell reprogramming to generate pluripotent cells and differentiate them into functional cells. This process is crucial in regenerative medicine. However, the cell-converting strategies, which mainly depend on the virus-mediated expression of exogenous genes, have clinical safety concerns. Small molecules with compelling advantages are a potential alternative in manipulating cell fate conversion. In this review, we briefly retrospect the nature of cell transdifferentiation and summarize the current developments in the research of small molecules in promoting cell conversion. Particularly, we focus on the complete chemical compound-induced cell transdifferentiation, which is closer to the clinical translation in cell therapy. Despite these achievements, the mechanisms underpinning chemical transdifferentiation remain largely unknown. More importantly, identifying drugs that induce resident cell conversion in vivo to repair damaged tissue remains to be the end-goal in current regenerative medicine.

Keywords

cell therapy / cell transdifferentiation / chemical compounds / small molecules / tissue regeneration

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 31301129), Shanghai Rising-Star Program (No. 16QA1402800), and the Ministry of Science and Technology (No. 2013CB966801).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Aining Xu and Lin Cheng declare that they have no financial conflicts of interest. This manuscript is a review article and does not involve a research protocol requiring approval by a relevant institutional review board or ethics committee.

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2016 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg