1. Establishing a High Throughput Epidermal Spheroid Culture System to Model Keratinocyte Stem Cell Plasticity
- Author
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Justin Vercellino, Lucia Pirisi, Kim E. Creek, Geraldine Ezeka, Yvon Woappi, and Sean M. Bloos
- Subjects
Keratinocytes ,Male ,0301 basic medicine ,Transcription, Genetic ,General Chemical Engineering ,Cell Plasticity ,Cell Culture Techniques ,Cell Separation ,Biology ,Article ,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology ,Colony-Forming Units Assay ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Spheroids, Cellular ,medicine ,Humans ,Anoikis ,Cells, Cultured ,Cell Proliferation ,integumentary system ,General Immunology and Microbiology ,Stem Cells ,General Neuroscience ,Regeneration (biology) ,Spheroid ,Epithelium ,Cell biology ,030104 developmental biology ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,Epidermal Cells ,Cell Tracking ,030220 oncology & carcinogenesis ,Stem cell ,Wound healing ,Keratinocyte ,Biomarkers - Abstract
Epithelial dysregulation is a node for a variety of human conditions and ailments, including chronic wounding, inflammation, and over 80% of all human cancers. As a lining tissue, the skin epithelium is often subject to injury and has evolutionarily adapted by acquiring the cellular plasticity necessary to repair damaged tissue. Over the years, several efforts have been made to study epithelial plasticity using in vitro and ex vivo cell-based models. However, these efforts have been limited in their capacity to recapitulate the various phases of epithelial cell plasticity. We describe here a protocol for generating 3D epidermal spheroids and epidermal spheroid-derived cells from primary neonatal human keratinocytes. This protocol outlines the capacity of epidermal spheroid cultures to functionally model distinct stages of keratinocyte generative plasticity and demonstrates that epidermal spheroid re-plating can enrich heterogenous normal human keratinocytes (NHKc) cultures for integrinα6hi/EGFRlo keratinocyte subpopulations with enhanced stem-like characteristics. Our report describes the development and maintenance of a high throughput system for the study of skin keratinocyte plasticity and epidermal regeneration.
- Published
- 2021
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