Plenary Speakers
Opening Speaker: Jeanne F. Loring, Scripps Research Institute
Dr. Jeanne Loring is an internationally recognized pioneer in human pluripotent stem cell research, beginning her work on these cells more than 20 years ago. In 2021, her lab was the first to make iPSCs from any endangered species. She has extensive experience in both academia and industry, and is currently Professor Emeritus at Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA, and advisor to Aspen Neuroscience, the company she founded to develop a cell replacement therapy for Parkinson’s disease, using dopamine neurons derived from autologous induced pluripotent stem cells.
Keynote Speaker: Katsuhiko Hayashi, Osaka University
Dr. Katsuhiko Hayashi has been working on germ cell development and its reconstitution in vitro through his career. Since 2021, he has been a full professor in the Department of Genome Biology in the Graduate School of Medicine at Osaka University. Dr. Hayashi has worked and trained at a variety of institutions, including Meiji University, Tokyo University of Science, the Osaka Medical Center, University of Cambridge, and Kyushu University.
Keynote Speaker: Martin Pera, the Jackson Laboratory
Dr. Martin Pera is a Professor at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, the Chair of the Steering Group of the International Stem Cell Initiative, a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, and Editor-in-Chief of the society’s journal, Stem Cell Reports. Pera’s research focus is the cell biology of human pluripotent stem cells. Pera was amongst the first to analyze heterogeneity in human pluripotent stem cell cultures, work that is critical to their use as models for human development.
Advances & Innovations
Stuart Chambers, Brightfield Therapeutics
Title: An Artificial Intelligence For Human Pluripotent Stem Cells
Britney Ragunton, Steve Van Buskirk, Devin Wakefield, Ninad Ranadive, Andrew Pipathsouk, Baikang Pei, Hong Zhou, Tracy Yamawaki, Mike Berke, Chi-Ming Li, Christopher Hale, Songli Wang, Stuart M. Chambers
Pluripotent stem cell culture is a bespoke and user-dependent process limiting the scale and complexity of the experiments performed and introducing operator-to-operator and day-to-day variation. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers the speed and flexibility to bridge the gap between a human-dependent process and industrial-scale automation while remaining adaptive enough to work across various stem cell lines and species. I have developed multiple image-based ML models that can be used independently or in-line with automation to assist in pluripotent stem cell culture and quality assessment. These AIs can report back exact cell numbers of undifferentiated human induced pluripotent stem cells and assess clone quality using only brightfield images. By performing 26,400 individual well-level counts analyzing 422,400 images in 12 hours for less than $100, a single AI model can scale way beyond what a scientist in a lifetime can accomplish at the bench.
Jonathan Yuin-Han LOH, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology
Title: Nuclear Receptor-Transposable Element Axis Modulates Expanded Stem Cell Pluripotency and Capacitates Blastoid Formation
Ka Wai Wong, Yingying Zeng, Yuin-Han Loh
Embryonic stem cells manifest self-organizing ability in forming blastocyst-like structures upon induction. However, the intrinsic regulators orchestrating such blastoid forming potential remain unknown. We first establish metrics for grading blastoid resemblance to mouse blastocysts. Single-cell transcriptome analysis reveals differential active gene regulons in lineage specification among different blastoid grades. Abrogation of nuclear receptor (NR) protein drastically reduces blastoid formation. Integrative multi-omics analysis reveals broad effects of activated NR in transcriptome, chromatin accessibility and epigenome, which enhance both blastoid and blastocyst maturation. Single agonist NR activation is sufficient in rewiring conventional ESC towards a distinct pluripotency state capable of forming blastoids and contributing to embryonic and extraembryonic lineage in vivo. Mechanistically, we uncover a novel dual regulatory role of NR by interacting with corepressor or coactivator complex to modulate specific transposable elements cis-regulatory functions on target genes, to confer expanded pluripotency.
Nikki Traylor-Knowles, University of Miami
Title: The Future of Coral Reefs: Exploring the Potential of Stem Cell Transplantation
To be determined
Jun Wu, University of Texas Southwestern
Title: Dynamic Pluripotent Stem Cell States and Their Applications
Stem cells are powerful tools to model development and disease, and hold tremendous promise for reproductive and conservation biology. Our work has contributed to the development of novel culture systems and methods that enable the generation of new stem cells for several different species. In this presentation I will briefly introduce our work on the derivation of new embryonic and extraembryonic stem cells, and applications for using these stem cells to engineer embryo-like entities in culture and generate tissues in interspecies chimeras.
Alex Ng, GC Therapeutics
Title: The TFome™ platform to translate cellular programming technologies for therapeutic and biodiversity applications
Cellular reprogramming technologies hold incredible promise from therapeutics to agriculture, yet its application for conservation and biodiversity has not been fully realized. The TFome™ platform technology for cell fate programming aims to revolutionize the field by addressing critical issues from the discovery paradigm for identifying key programming factors, particularly in non-model species where developmental biology knowledge is limited, to translation where human clinical-grade manufacturing processes may be applicable for biodiversity preservation. We embrace a process-centric discovery approach to identify key forward programming factors for converting pluripotent stem cells into desired cell states to enable highly efficient (up to 99% in the final population), streamlined (single-step, accelerated speed) and “plug-and-play” (single media, standardized unit operations) cell type conversion. By expanding and searching the TFome™ library representing over 1,700 human transcription factor genes at the resolution of individual isoforms, at the single-cell level with omics-wide readouts, we identified key cell fate regulators that enable programming in a cell-autonomous manner without the requirement for specialized cell-external factors. Retrospective analysis of potent forward programming factors suggest that global TFome™ exploration is essential, as computational and observation-based predictions missed key transcription factors. The TFome™ platform technology is envisioned to accelerate the development of cocktails for reprogramming and forward programming in non-model species to improve the resilience and preservation of at-risk and endangered species.
Lightning Talks
Andrew French, University of Melbourne and Monash University
Wider technological crossroads for Animal Cloning and Stem Cells and their opportunities for conservation
Antonia Weberling, University of Cambridge
The Diversity of Squamate Pre-Oviposition Embryogenesis
Francisco Pelegri, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Proof-of-principle for pooled biopreservation using gray wolf (Canis lupus) samples: a village-in-a-capillary approach
Nicole Tay, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology
Endangered Species Conservation via Assisted Reproduction (ESCAR)
Woranop Sukparangsi, Burapha University
Challenges to generate non-integrative felid iPSCs
Uma Lakshmipathy, Thermo Fisher Scientific
Creating solutions and services for somatic reprogramming
Sara Ord, Colossal Biosciences
To be determined
Timo Kohler, University of Cambridge
Cells in gels – promoting pluripotency in 3D microgels
