A Novel Protocol for Directed Differentiation of C9orf72-Associated Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Into Contractile Skeletal Myotubes

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) offer an unlimited resource of cells to be used for the study of underlying molecular biology of disease, therapeutic drug screening, and transplant‐based regenerative medicine. However, methods for the directed differentiation of skeletal muscle for these purposes remain scarce and incomplete. Here, we present a novel, small molecule‐based protocol for the generation of multinucleated skeletal myotubes using eight independent iPSC lines. Through combinatorial inhibition of phosphoinositide 3‐kinase (PI3K) and glycogen synthase kinase 3β (GSK3β) with addition of bone morphogenic protein 4 (BMP4) and fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2), we report up to 64% conversion of iPSCs into the myogenic program by day 36 as indicated by MYOG+ cell populations. These cells began to exhibit spontaneous contractions as early as 34 days in vitro in the presence of a serum‐free medium formulation. We used this protocol to obtain iPSC‐derived muscle cells from frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients harboring C9orf72 hexanucleotide repeat expansions (rGGGGCC), sporadic FTD, and unaffected controls. iPSCs derived from rGGGGCC carriers contained RNA foci but did not vary in differentiation efficiency when compared to unaffected controls nor display mislocalized TDP‐43 after as many as 120 days in vitro. This study presents a rapid, efficient, and transgene‐free method for generating multinucleated skeletal myotubes from iPSCs and a resource for further modeling the role of skeletal muscle in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other motor neuron diseases.

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