Dr. Jiyoung-Yoon at ITREN successfully reprogrammed human fibroblasts to chemically-induced osteogenic cells (ciOG). The study recently got published in journal Biomaterials (IF:15.304) under the title “Chemically-induced osteogenic cells for bone tissue engineering and disease modeling".

Reprogrammed cells have been used as platforms for various disease modeling and drug discovery applications because the sources of disease-specific human cells and tissues are often limited. Chemical-induced cell reprogramming has several advantages over the genetic methods such as better safety, expandability, and reproducibility. Inspired from this, Dr. Ji-young Yoon at ITREN successfully reprogrammed human fibroblasts to chemically-induced osteogenic cells (ciOG) by means of a chemical cocktail (RepSox, forskolin, and phenamil) treatment. Various in-vitro studies were performed, especially RNA sequencing analysis were done to reveal distinct ciOG population and its dependence on BMP signaling. In-vivo experiments showed the potential of ciOGs to induce mineralization at ectopic sites. Further engineered nanofibers with ciOGs were utilized to reveal their osteogenic capacity in a critical sized bone defect model. All the results demonstrated that ciOG significantly accelerated neo bone formation and promotes the osteogenic capacity. Additionally, the ciOG platform reviewed the proteus syndrome (PS) and osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) which are genetic bone diseases, allowing candidate drug testing for bone disease modeling and drug discovery.