ABSTRACT
Background & Aims Hypoxia in the intestinal epithelium can be caused by acute ischemic events or conditions like Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) where immune cell infiltration produces ‘inflammatory hypoxia’, a chronic condition that starves the mucosa of oxygen. Epithelial regeneration after ischemia and IBD suggests intestinal stem cells (ISCs) are highly tolerant to acute and chronic hypoxia; however, the impact of acute and chronic hypoxia on human ISC (hISC) properties have not been reported. Here we present a new microphysiological system (MPS) to investigate how hypoxia affects hISCs isolated from healthy human tissues. We then test the hypothesis that some inflammation-associated interleukins protect hISCs during prolonged hypoxia.
Methods hISCs were exposed to <1.0% oxygen in the MPS for 6-, 24-, 48- & 72hrs. Viability, HIF1α response, transcriptomics, cell cycle dynamics, and hISC response to cytokines were evaluated.
Results The novel MPS enables precise, real-time control and monitoring of oxygen levels at the cell surface. Under hypoxia, hISCs remain viable until 72hrs and exhibit peak HIF1α at 24hrs. hISCs lose stem cell activity at 24hrs that recovers at 48hrs of hypoxia. Hypoxia increases the proportion of hISCs in G1 and regulates hISC capacity to respond to multiple inflammatory signals. Hypoxia induces hISCs to upregulate many interleukin receptors and hISCs demonstrate hypoxia-dependent cell cycle regulation and increased organoid forming efficiency when treated with specific interleukins
Conclusions Hypoxia primes hISCs to respond differently to interleukins than hISCs in normoxia through a transcriptional response. hISCs slow cell cycle progression and increase hISC activity when treated with hypoxia and specific interleukins. These findings have important implications for epithelial regeneration in the gut during inflammatory events.
- Inflammatory Hypoxia
- Intestinal stem cells
- Stem Cell Priming
- Oxygen Sensor
- Cytokines
Competing Interest Statement
STM has a financial interest in Altis Biosystems, Inc., Durham, NC. The remaining authors declare no competing related financial interests or conflict of interest at the time of the conduct of this study.
ABBREVIATIONS
- (IBD)
- Inflammatory Bowel Disease
- (ISC)
- Intestinal stem cell
- (hISC)
- Human intestinal stem cell
- (MPS)
- Microphysiological system
- (iPOB)
- integrated Phosphorescent Oxygen Biosensor
- (NIR)
- Near Infrared
- (2D)
- 2-Dimensional
- (OCLN)
- Occludin
- (OFE)
- organoid forming efficiency
- (CRAs)
- CellRaft™ Arrays
- (PCA)
- Principal Component Analysis
- (PC)
- Principal Component
- (GSEA)
- Gene Set Enrichment Analysis
- (IL)
- interleukin
- (DGE)
- Differential gene expression
- (ER)
- endoplasmic reticulum
- (UPR)
- unfolded-protein response
- (ILC2s)
- Innate Lymphoid Cells Type 2
- (DTT)
- dithiothreitol
- (EM)
- Expansion Media
- (PMMA)
- polymethylmethacrylate
- (DCM)
- dichloromethane
- (pHEMA)
- poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate)
- (FACS)
- Fluorescence-activated cell sorting
- (RIN)
- RNA integrity number
- (IFCs)
- integrated fluidic circuits