Harnessing adult stem cells (SC) for regenerative medicine is a global initiative that holds great promise in the UAE’s healthcare system. Indeed, regenerative medicine is crucially needed in the UAE to care for the high number of injuries caused by road accidents such as skin burns. To safely induce regeneration, we must be able to maintain SCs in culture by supporting self-renewal and inhibiting differentiation. Self-renewal is a process whereby SCs maintain their pool by dividing and inhibiting differentiation. Differentiation, however, is when SCs lose stemness and become specialized cells. Human epidermal SCs have been successfully maintained in culture with the aid of mouse feeder cells, hence limiting their medical use. Alternatively, feeder free cultures have been developed, but fail to reconstitute skin in vitro. Here, we propose to support the self-renewal of human epidermal SCs in culture by recapitulating a recent discovered epitranscriptome dependent small vault-RNA pathway inhibiting differentiation.
