Designed Minibinders Rewire Receptor Signaling to Enable Functional Human Myogenic Reprogramming
Keshri, R.; Foreman, Z.; Barrett, P.; Robinson, A. J.; Reyes, G.; Phal, A. A.; Krishnakumar, A.; Narog, E.; Chiu, M.; Jain, S.; Wang, X.; Lee, D.; Exposit, M.; Abedi, M.; Smith, A. S. T.; Srivatsan, S. R.; Shendure, J.; Mathieu, J.; Mack, D. L.; Baker, D.; Ruohola-Baker, H.
Show abstract
Sarcopenia, loss of muscle mass is a considerable health burden that demands immediate societal attention. Direct myogenic somatic cell reprogramming, a potential muscle regeneration method is constrained by an inability to control the signaling logic that governs cell fate. Here, we show that this barrier can be overcome using AI-designed receptor modulators. Screening de novo minibinders, we identify a synthetic protein cocktail, C6-DPC, that drives efficient human fibroblast-to-muscle transdifferentiation with robust structural and metabolic maturation. C6-DPC reprograms extracellular signaling by activating pro-myogenic FGFR1/2c pathways while suppressing anti-myogenic inputs through ALK1 and TGFBR2; targeted depletion of ALK1 is sufficient to lower the reprogramming barrier. Inflammatory signaling via gp130 emerges as a dominant checkpoint, and its inhibition further enhances conversion. Engineered tissues generate high twitch and tetanic forces in both wild-type and dystrophin-deficient human cells. These findings demonstrate that programmable synthetic ligands can rewrite receptor-level signaling to direct cell fate and enable functional tissue regeneration.
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