Rationale An efficient and reproducible source of genotype-specific human macrophages is essential for study of human macrophage biology and related diseases. Objective To perform integrated functional and transcriptome analyses of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived macrophages (IPSDM) and their isogenic PBMC-derived macrophages (HMDM) counterparts and assess the application of IPSDM in modeling macrophage polarization and Mendelian disease. Methods and Results We developed an efficient protocol for differentiation of IPSDM, which expressed macrophage-specific markers and took up modified lipoproteins in a similar manner to HMDM. Like HMDM, IPSDM revealed reduction in phagocytosis, increase in cholesterol efflux capacity and characteristic secretion of inflammatory cytokines in response to M1 (LPS+IFN-γ) activation. RNA-Seq revealed that non-polarized (M0) as well as M1 or M2 (IL-4) polarized IPSDM shared transcriptomic profiles with their isogenic HMDM counterparts while also revealing novel markers of macrophage polarization. Relative to IPSDM and HMDM of control individuals, patterns of defective cholesterol efflux to apoA-I and HDL3 were qualitatively and quantitatively similar in IPSDM and HMDM of patients with Tangier disease (TD), an autosomal recessive disorder due to mutations in ATP-binding cassette transporter A1. TD-IPSDM also revealed novel defects of enhanced pro-inflammatory response to LPS stimulus. Conclusions Our protocol-derived IPSDM are comparable to HMDM at phenotypic, functional and transcriptomic levels. TD-IPSDM recapitulated hallmark features observed in HMDM and reveal novel inflammatory phenotypes. IPSDM provide a powerful tool for study of macrophage-specific function in human genetic disorders as well as molecular studies of human macrophage activation and polarization.

Inflammation is a fundamental feature of several complex cardiometabolic diseases. Indeed, obesity, insulin resistance, metabolic dyslipidemia, and atherosclerosis are all closely linked inflammatory states. Increasing evidence suggests that the infectious, biome-related or endogenous activation of the innate immune system may contribute to the development of metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. Here we describe the human experimental endotoxemia model for the specific study of innate immunity in understanding further the pathogenesis of cardiometabolic disease. In a controlled, experimental setting, administration of an intravenous bolus of purified Escherichia coli endotoxin activates innate immunity in healthy human volunteers. During endotoxemia, changes emerge in glucose metabolism, lipoprotein composition, and lipoprotein functions that closely resemble those observed chronically in inflammatory cardiovascular disease risk states. In this review we describe the transient systemic inflammation and specific metabolic consequences that develop during human endotoxemia. Such a model provides a controlled induction of systemic inflammation, eliminates confounding, undermines reverse causation, and possesses unique potential as a starting point for genomic screening and testing of novel therapeutics for treatment of the inflammatory underpinning of cardiometabolic disease.

Reduced sociability is a core feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and is highly disabling, poorly understood, and treatment refractory. To elucidate the biological basis of reduced sociability, multiple laboratories are developing ASD-relevant mouse models, in which sociability is commonly assessed using the Social Choice Test. However, various measurements included in that test sometimes support different conclusions. Specifically, measurements of time the “test” mouse spends near a confined “stimulus” mouse (chamber scores) sometimes support different conclusions from measurements of time the test mouse sniffs the cylinder containing the stimulus mouse (cylinder scores). This raises the question of which type of measurements are best for assessing sociability. We assessed the test-retest reliability and ecological validity of chamber and cylinder scores. Compared with chamber scores, cylinder scores showed higher correlations between test and retest measurements, and cylinder scores showed higher correlations with time spent in social interaction in a more naturalistic phase of the test. This suggests that cylinder scores are more reliable and valid measures of sociability in mouse models. Cylinder scores are reported less commonly than chamber scores, perhaps because little work has been done to establish automated software systems for measuring the former. In this study, we found that a particular automated software system performed at least as well as human raters at measuring cylinder scores. Our data indicate that cylinder scores are more reliable and valid than chamber scores, and that the former can be measured very accurately using an automated video analysis system in ASD-relevant models.