Human-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Neural Cells from Alzheimer's Disease Patients Exhibited Different Susceptibility to Oxidative Stress

The cell-type-specific response of neural cells to oxidative stress, a crucial mechanism for accelerating aging and cognitive dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease (AD), is still far from understood. Here, we employed human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs)-derived neural stem cells (hiPSC-NSCs), neurons (hiPSC-Neurons), and microglia-like cells (hiPSC-MGLs) from sporadic AD (sAD) patients, age-matched cognitive normal controls (CNCs), and young subjects to observe human neural cell-type response to H2O2 stimulation. Without H2O2 exposure, reactive oxygen species (ROS) cannot be detected in hiPSC-NSCs from all three groups, but the viability of hiPSC-NSCs from AD patients was significantly lower than those of CNCs and young subjects. There were no significant differences in ROS, viabilities, neurite length, and neurite branch points in hiPSC-Neurons among three groups. No significant differences in viabilities, phagocytosis, and secretion of cytokines were observed in hiPSC-MGLs among three groups, but higher ROS levels in sAD hiPSC-MGLs. Under H2O2 exposure, the viability, neurite length, and neurite branch points of hiPSC-Neurons from AD patients reduced more significantly accompanied by more ROS release. H2O2 exposure caused hiPSC-MGLs from AD patients to release more ROS, cytokines, and stronger phagocytosis. Nevertheless, H2O2 exposure had no effect on viability of hiPSC-NSCs. Our results showed hiPSC-Neurons and hiPSC-MGLs were more sensitive to H2O2 than hiPSC-NSCs, which indicated the different response styles of hiPSC-NSCs, hiPSC-Neurons, and hiPSC-MGLs to oxidative stress. HiPSC-derived neural cells from AD patients suffered more severe injury from H2O2 than those of CNCs and young subjects, indicating that the vulnerability to oxidative stress of AD patients can be recapitulated in hiPSCs.