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Volume 8 Journal of Stem Cell Research & Therapy
ISSN: 2157-7633 Stem Cell Congress 2018
October 08-09, 2018
October 08-09, 2018 | Zurich, Switzerland
10 th Annual Conference on
Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine
Notch/Wnt cross-signalling regulates stemness of dental pulp stem cells through a link between core
pluripotency factors, metabolism and epigenetics
Verónica Uribe-Etxebarria
University of the Basque Country, Spain
Dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) from adult teeth express neural crest (NC) markers together with core transcriptional
factors associated with stem cell pluripotency, such as Oct4a, Sox2, c-Myc, Rex1, Stella/Dppa3, Ssea1/Fut4, Lin28 and
Nanog. The possibility to boost the natural stemness features of DPSCs by mild methods that do not involve gene and/or
chromatin modification or gene transfection, is highly desirable for cell therapy. Canonical Wnt and Notch are two highly
conserved developmental signalling pathways that are involved in NC emergence and stem cell self-renewal. We determined
that both pathways coordinate to regulate the expression of core pluripotency and NC factors in DPSCs. Pharmacological
inhibition of the Notch pathway for 48 h, by the γ-secretase inhibitor DAPT, abolished the expression of NC and core factors.
This pluripotency network seems to be connected with metabolismwhich is mainly glycolytic and highly oxidative. Epigenetics
plays also a relevant role preventing DNA frommethylation and increasing acetylation marks in histones. Genetic, metabolism
and epigenetics would be connected by complex networks which allow cell reprogramming. In addition, it induced a silencing
of the canonical Wnt signalling and a clear reduction in the stemness potential of DPSCs, as shown by a reduced ability to
generate mature, fully differentiated osteoblasts and adipocytes. Conversely, pharmacological activation of the Wnt pathway for
48 h, by either the glycogen synthase kinase 3 beta BIO or the human recombinant protein Wnt-3a, not only largely increased
the expression of NC and core factors, but also increased the efficiency of DPSCs to differentiate into mature osteoblasts and
adipocytes. These results showed that a short preconditioning activation of Wnt/Notch signalling by small molecules and/
or recombinant proteins enhanced the stemness and potency of DPSCs in culture, which could be useful for optimizing the
therapeutic use of these and other tissue-specific stem cells.
Biography
Verónica Uribe-Etxebarria is a PhD student at the University of the Basque Country and she has done part of her thesis at The Institute of Cancer Research and
Biodonostia Health Research Institute. She has published two papers in Frontiers in Physiology and European Cells and Materials.
Verónica Uribe-Etxebarria, J Stem Cell Res Ther 2018, Volume 8
DOI: 10.4172/2157-7633-C4-041