Use of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells to Model the Hematopoietic Defect and Repair of Human Telomerase Deficiency

Telomeres are repetitive DNA protein structures that cap the ends of chromosomes, protect chromosome ends from degradation and fusion, and are essential for maintenance of genomic integrity. Telomere length has been shown to gradually shorten over time as cells divide. When telomeres become critically short, the cells enter a state of senescence. As such, telomere shortening has been implicated in accelerated aging. Defects in telomerase function have been associated with the development of bone marrow failure. Patients with inherited mutations in telomerase components have significantly shortened telomere lengths and reductions in telomere length have been associated with a worse prognosis in myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and Aplastic anemia (AA). We have isolated fibroblasts from patients with a novel mutation in the telomerase RNA component (TERC), a 6 nucleotide in frame duplication at position +334, which results in bone marrow failure. We have derived several lines of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from these patients. We have demonstrated that these telomerase-deficient iPSCs appropriately express markers of pluripotency: Oct4, Sox2, SSEA4, and Nanog. Using quantitative real time PCR, we were able to measure the average telomere length as a T/S ratio of kilobases of telomere length per genome. We have determined that reprogramming results in significant increase in telomere length of control fibroblasts.  However despite the typical induction of endogenous TERT expression during reprograming in our telomerase-deficient iPSCs, these TERC-mutant iPSCs did not demonstrate significant telomere elongation. We found telomerase-deficient fibroblasts have telomere lengths of 130-150kb/diploid genome compared to normal human fibroblasts with telomeres of ~250kb/diploid genome. After reprogramming, the iPSCs generated from wild type fibroblasts can have markedly increased telomere lengths to as high as 2000kb/diploid genome. The telomere lengths in TERC-mutant iPSCs from two different patients are less than 300kb/diploid genome (replicates =3). Expression of telomerase components TERT and TERC, DKC was compared to the mRNA level by qRT-PCR in the TERC-mutant iPSCs. We found significant variation in mRNA expression levels of telomerase components the different lines of telomerase deficient iPSCs, and even variation among different clones of the same telomerase deficient line. We have also found that mutations in TERC results in defective hematopoietic differentiation from these iPSCs in in vitro assays. In the TERC-mutant iPSCs, the proportion of CD34+CD45+ hematopoietic cells was reduced compared to wild type controls. Wild type iPSCs produce 30% CD34+ cells compared to 15-20% in TERC-mutant iPSCs (n=3). Additionally, wild type iPSC controls produce 9-10% CD34+CD45+ hematopoietic progenitor cells compared to 1-2% of TERC mutant cells. Interestingly, approximately equal proportions (8-9%) of wild type and TERC-mutant cells differentiate into CD34+CD31+ endothelial cells, suggesting this pathway is less affected by the TERC mutation.  The TERC-mutant iPSCs demonstrate reduced development of hematopoietic progenitor cells in standard hematopoietic colony forming cell assays: 100 CFCs per 50,000 differentiated wild type iPSC-derived cells compared to 65 CFCs per 50,000 differentiated TERC mutant iPSC-derived cells. In order to rescue the hematopoietic defect in telomerase deficient TERC-mutant iPSCs we have used the Sleeping Beauty transposon system to over express these telomerase components TERC and TERT in the TERC mutant iPSCs. We are currently characterizing the effect of overexpression of these telomerase components on hematopoietic differentiation to determine if this provides a strategy to enable use of gene-corrected iPSCs to provide a future therapy for patients with bone marrow failure due to defined telomerase deficiencies.