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  • Directed differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells into articular cartilage reveals effects caused by absence of WISP3, the gene responsible for progressive pseudorheumatoid arthropathy of childhood

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Early arthritis
Directed differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells into articular cartilage reveals effects caused by absence of WISP3, the gene responsible for progressive pseudorheumatoid arthropathy of childhood
  1. Chaochang Li1,
  2. Mireia Alemany-Ribes1,
  3. Rosanne M Raftery1,
  4. Uzochi Nwoko1,
  5. Matthew L Warman1,2,
  6. April M Craft1,3,4
  1. 1 Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  2. 2 Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  3. 3 Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
  4. 4 Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr April M Craft, Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA; april.craft{at}childrens.harvard.edu

Abstract

Objectives Progressive pseudorheumatoid arthropathy of childhood (PPAC), caused by deficiency of WNT1 inducible signalling pathway protein 3 (WISP3), has been challenging to study because no animal model of the disease exists and cartilage recovered from affected patients is indistinguishable from common end-stage osteoarthritis. Therefore, to gain insights into why precocious articular cartilage failure occurs in this disease, we made in vitro derived articular cartilage using isogenic WISP3-deficient and WISP3-sufficient human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs).

Methods We generated articular cartilage-like tissues from induced-(i) PSCs from two patients with PPAC and one wild-type human embryonic stem cell line in which we knocked out WISP3. We compared these tissues to in vitro-derived articular cartilage tissues from two isogenic WISP3-sufficient control lines using histology, bulk RNA sequencing, single cell RNA sequencing and in situ hybridisation.

Results WISP3-deficient and WISP3-sufficient hPSCs both differentiated into articular cartilage-like tissues that appeared histologically similar. However, the transcriptomes of WISP3-deficient tissues differed significantly from WISP3-sufficient tissues and pointed to increased TGFβ, TNFα/NFκB, and IL-2/STAT5 signalling and decreased oxidative phosphorylation. Single cell sequencing and in situ hybridisation revealed that WISP3-deficient cartilage contained a significantly higher fraction (~4 fold increase, p<0.001) of superficial zone chondrocytes compared with deeper zone chondrocytes than did WISP3-sufficient cartilage.

Conclusions WISP3-deficient and WISP3-sufficient hPSCs can be differentiated into articular cartilage-like tissues, but these tissues differ in their transcriptomes and in the relative abundances of chondrocyte subtypes they contain. These findings provide important starting points for in vivo studies when an animal model of PPAC or presymptomatic patient-derived articular cartilage becomes available.

  • Arthritis
  • Arthritis, Rheumatoid
  • Chondrocytes
  • Child

Data availability statement

Data are available in a public, open access repository. Data are available on reasonable request. Next-generation sequencing data can be accessed in GSE230194 (bulk RNA seq) and GSE230195 (single cell RNA seq), or is reported previously in Accession GSE195688.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/ard-2023-224304

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    Data availability statement

    Data are available in a public, open access repository. Data are available on reasonable request. Next-generation sequencing data can be accessed in GSE230194 (bulk RNA seq) and GSE230195 (single cell RNA seq), or is reported previously in Accession GSE195688.

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    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Josef S Smolen

    • Twitter @RMRaftery

    • CL and MA-R contributed equally.

    • Contributors All authors were involved in drafting and/or critical review of the manuscript, and approved the final version for submission. All authors agree to attest to the accuracy and integrity of the work. Conceptualisation (AMC and MLW), data curation (CL, MA-R and RMR), formal analysis (CL and MA-R), funding acquisition (AMC and MLW), investigation (CL, MA-R, RMR and UN), methodology (CL, MA-R and RMR), resources (MA-R, RMR and UN), supervision (AMC and MLW), validation (CL, MA-R and UN), writing–original draft preparation (CL and AMC), writing–review and editing (CL, AMC, MA-R and MLW).

    • Funding We thank the Charles H. Hood Foundation (AMC) and the National Institutes of Health and NIAMS (R21-AR076105, AMC and MLW; R01-AR073821, AMC) for supporting this work.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.