Year 5

The central mission of our Berkeley CIRM Shared Stem Cell Facility (SSCF) is to provide our East Bay users with knowledge, expertise, training, and equipment to advance scientific knowledge of human embryonic, induced pluripotent, and adult stem cells. The Flow Cytometry Facility in 461 Li Ka Shing houses the CIRM funded cell sorter. The B129 Stanley suite contains cell culture hoods, four incubators, and other essential lab equipment. The SSCF also has an automated wide field ImageXpress Micro, and two analytical flow cytometers, and a 2-photon and confocal fluorescence microscope. In B203 Stanley, there is a BioRad BioPlex MAGPIX reader for magnetic bead–based multiplexed immunoassays. We have reached a steady state usage of ~90 students and postdoctoral fellows from the laboratories of 21 PIs. Based on the interests of the users, we have continued in Year 5 to obtain additional instrumentation that will be useful to users. For instance, this year we added two independent hypoxia chambers to fit within one of our standard incubators so that experiments at low O2 conditions (similar to the O2 concentration tissues experience inside the body) can be performed. We also now manage a histology lab with equipment to creating slides from tissue specimens. These additions this year will further enhance the offerings to UCB and extended community stem cell researchers.

The previously highlighted PIs continue to have success using SSCF instrumentation and we would like to highlight publications by researchers who have made significant advancements to their research.
Publications:
Li J, Han S, Cousin W, Conboy IM. (2014) “Age-specific functional epigenetic changes in p21 and p16 in injury-activated satellite cells.” Stem Cells, 10:1002 (PMID: 25447026).

Yousef, H., M.J. Conboy, H. Mamiya, M. Zeiderman, C. Schlesinger, D.V. Schaffer, and I.M. Conboy (2014) “Mechanisms of action of hESC-secreted proteins that enhance human and mouse myogenesis” Aging, 8:602-20 (PMID 25109702).

Elabd C, Cousin W, Upadhyayula P, Chen RY, Chooljian MS, Li J, Kung S, Jiang KP, Conboy IM (2014) “Oxytocin is an age-specific circulating hormone that is necessary for muscle maintenance and regeneration.” Nat Commun, 5:4082 (PMID: 24915299).

MacKay, J.L. and S. Kumar (2014). “Simultaneous and independent tuning of RhoA and Rac1 activity with orthogonally inducible promoters.” Integrative Biology 6: 885-894 (PMID: 25044255).

Kim, Y. and S. Kumar (2014). “CD44-mediated adhesion to hyaluronic acid contributes to mechanosensing and invasive motility.” Molecular Cancer Research 12: 1416-1429 (PMID: 24962319).

Umesh, V., A. Rape, T. A. Ulrich, and S. Kumar (2014). “Microenvironmental stiffness enhances glioma cell proliferation by stimulating epidermal growth factor receptor signaling.” PLOS ONE 9: E101771 (PMID: 25000176)

Rape, D. and S. Kumar (2014). “A composite hydrogel platform for the dissection of tumor cell migration at tissue interfaces.” Biomaterials 35: 8846-8853 (PMID: 25047626).

Jha, A. K., W. M. Jackson, and K. E. Healy (2014) “Controlling osteogenic stem cell differentiation via soft bioinspired hydrogels.” PLoS One 9:e98640 (PMID: 24937602)

Huebsch, Nathaniel, Peter Loskill, Mohammad Mandegar, Natalie C. Marks, Alice S. Sheehan, Zhen Ma, Anurag A. Mathur (2014) “Automated video-based analysis of contractility and calcium flux in human iPS–derived cardiomyocytes cultured over different spatial scales.” Tissue Engineering Part C Methods (EPub ahead of print) (PMID: 25333967)

Ma, Z. Koo S, Finnegan MA, Loskill P, Huebsch N, Marks NC, Conklin BR, Grigoropoulos CP, Healy KE (2014) Three-dimensional filamentous human diseased cardiac tissue model. Biomaterials 35, 1367–77 (PMID: 24268663).

Yousef, H., A. Morgenthaler, C. Schlesinger, L. Bugaj, I. Conboy, and D.V. Schaffer “Age-Associated Increase in BMP Signaling inhibits Hippocampal Neurogenesis.” Stem Cells (in press).

Fritz, A., S.R. Mao, M.G. West, and D.V. Schaffer (2015) “A Medium-Throughput Analysis of Signaling Pathways Involved in Early Stages of Stem Cell Reprogramming.” Biotechnology & Bioengineering 1:209-19 (PMID: 25065366).

Hughes, A.J., D.P. Spelke, Z. Xu, C-C. Kang, D.V. Schaffer (co-corresponding author), and A.E. Herr (2014) “Single-cell Western Blotting.” Nature Methods, 11:749-755 (PMID 24880876).

Leo, Y., D. Jeong, J, Xiao, and D.V. Schaffer “Developing Defined and Scalable 3D Culture Systems for Culturing Human Pluripotent Stem Cells at High Densities.” Cell and Molecular Bioengineering 2:172-183 (PMID: 25419247).

Conway, A. and D.V. Schaffer (2014) “Biomaterial Microenvironments to Support the Generation of New Neurons in the Adult Brain.” Stem Cells, 32:1220-1229 (PMID 24449485).

Vazin, T., R.S. Ashton, A. Conway, N. Rode, S.M. Lee, V. Bravo, K.E. Healy, R.S. Kane, and D.V. Schaffer (2014) “The Effect of Multivalent Sonic Hedgehog on Differentiation of Human Embryonic Stem Cells into Dopaminergic and GABAergic Neurons.” Biomaterials, 35:941-948 (PMID 24172856).