Effect of OCT4 overexpression on the neural induction of human dental pulp stem cells

Stem cell-based therapy is an alternative strategy for brain repair. Various cell types have been investigated and dental pulp stem cells (DPSC) have been identified as promising candidates. These multipotent stem cells are found in the dental pulp tissue of molar teeth. They are clinically easily obtained, have a high proliferative rate, and possess neurogenic potential due to their mesoectodermal origin. Here, overexpression of octamer-binding transcription factor 4 (OCT4) in combination with neural conditions was used to reprogram human DPSC along the neural lineage. Transcriptomic analysis of differentially-expressed genes highlighted the expression of genes associated with neural and neuronal functions in the OCT4-overexpressing DPSC following neural induction. Human dental pulp stem cells were transduced with either an empty lentiviral vector or a lentiviral vector encoding for OCT4, and were cultured in neural inductive conditions. RNA-sequencing was performed on one biological sample, with four replicates in each of three groups; untransduced DPSC in standard growth conditions (DPSC), empty vector-transduced DPSC following neural induction (DPSC-EV), and OCT4 vector-transduced DPSC following neural induction (DPSC-OCT4).