Stem Cells in Tissue Engineering
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Biology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 October 2025 | Viewed by 2216
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Pluripotent stem cells are powerful tools for tissue engineering, disease modeling, and drug screening systems. Recent studies have revealed the mechanisms involved in stem cell maintenance and differentiation, leading to new approaches for therapy. For example, the establishment of differentiated immune cells such as T and NK cells from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) is expected to be applied to CAR-T/NK therapy for cancer treatment.
In particular, transcription factors (TFs) appear to play pivotal roles for stem cell maintenance and differentiation as the master regulators. After binding to specific DNA elements, TFs regulate their target genes by associating with numerous transcriptional co-regulators, which are involved in RNA polymerase subunits, histone modifiers and binding proteins, chromatin remodeling factors, and others (such as lncRNAs). In recent years, with the development of PROTAC, targeting TFs and transcriptional co-regulators such as chromatin remodeling factors have become attractive drug targets for novel therapy.
Besides iPS inducible four TFs (Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc), nuclear receptors (NRs) and their transcriptional co-regulators involved in stem cell maintenance and differentiation are a good target for stem cell engineering. NRs are DNA-bound transcription factors that consist of two C4-type Zn Fingers in the DNA binding domain, and its transcriptional activity is regulated by direct binding with lipid-soluble ligands. There are many NRs acting as master regulators of stem cell maintenance (e.g., TLX; neural stem cells, ERRβ and LRH1; iPS cells) and differentiation (e.g., RORγt; Th17 differentiation, PPARγ; adipogenesis). In addition, NRs’ transcriptional co-regulators also regulate stem cell maintenance and differentiation. Furthermore, gene mutation diseases related to NRs have been reported, and drug discovery by creating mutated iPS can be expected.
This Special Issue aims to gain insight into the roles of TFs (not limited to NRs) and transcriptional co-regulators in stem cells including iPS, embryonic stem cells (ESs), and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for tissue engineering and drug screening. I invite researchers to contribute original research and review articles covering, but not limited to, the following research areas:
- Molecular mechanisms of stem cell maintenance and differentiation through TFs network.
- Application of stem cells for genetic disease modeling and drug screening.
- Application of stem cells for cancer immunotherapy.
Dr. Ichiro Takada
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- stem cells
- transcription factors
- transcription co-regulators
- chromatin remodeling factors
- chromatin receptors
- nuclear maintenance and differentiation
- iPS cells
- iPS-T/NK
- tissue engineering
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