Establishment of variant free-iPSC (UOMi003-A) line from patient with mitochondrial encephalopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes.

Heteroplasmy in patients affected with Mitochondrial Encephalopathy, Lactic Acidosis, and Stroke-like episodes (MELAS) offers a chance to harvest specific cells which might have a very low or no mutation load of the mitochondrial DNA. Here we demonstrate establishment of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) cell lines (with normal mitochondrial DNA copies), from unaffected tissues of a male patient with MELAS harbouring m.3243A > G mutations. This platform allowed us to compare specific pathway differences between the cells of the affected tissues of the patients and their isogenic counterparts derived from iPSCs, which do not harbour the mutations.