JAK2 as a surface marker for enrichment of human pluripotent stem cells-derived ventricular cardiomyocytes.

Background: Human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-derived cardiomyocytes (CMs) hold great promise for cardiac disease modelling, drug discovery and regenerative medicine. Despite the advancement in various differentiation protocols, the heterogeneity of the generated population composed of diverse cardiac subtypes poses a significant challenge to their practical applications. Mixed populations of cardiac subtypes can compromise disease modelling and drug discovery, while transplanting them may lead to undesired arrhythmias as they may not integrate and synchronize with the host tissue's contractility.

Robust generation of human-chambered cardiac organoids from pluripotent stem cells for improved modelling of cardiovascular diseases.

Background: Tissue organoids generated from human pluripotent stem cells are valuable tools for disease modelling and to understand developmental processes. While recent progress in human cardiac organoids revealed the ability of these stem cell-derived organoids to self-organize and intrinsically formed chamber-like structure containing a central cavity, it remained unclear the processes involved that enabled such chamber formation.

Methods: Chambered cardiac organoids (CCOs) differentiated from human embryonic stem cells (H7) were generated by modulation of Wnt/ß-catenin signalling under fully defined conditions, and several growth factors essential for cardiac progenitor expansion.

Upregulation of the JAK-STAT pathway promotes maturation of human embryonic stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes.

The immature characteristics and metabolic phenotypes of human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hPSC-CMs) restrict their applications for disease modeling, drug discovery, and cell-based therapy. Leveraging on the metabolic shifts from glycolysis to fatty acid oxidation as CMs mature, a human hexokinase1-GFP metabolic reporter cell line (H7 HK1-GFP) was generated to facilitate the isolation of fetal or more matured hPSC-CMs. RNA sequencing of fetal versus more matured CMs uncovered a potential role of interferon-signaling pathway in regulating CM maturation.

Mitochondrial 3243A > G mutation confers pro-atherogenic and pro-inflammatory properties in MELAS iPS derived endothelial cells.

Mitochondrial encephalomyopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes (MELAS) syndrome is a mitochondrial disorder that is commonly caused by the m.3243A > G mutation in the MT-TL1 gene encoding for mitochondrial tRNA(Leu(UUR)). While clinical studies reported cerebral infarcts, atherosclerotic lesions, and altered vasculature and stroke-like episodes (SLE) in MELAS patients, it remains unclear how this mutation causes the onset and subsequent progression of the disease.

Molecular integrative clustering of Asian gastric cell lines revealed two distinct chemosensitivity clusters.

Cell lines recapitulate cancer heterogeneity without the presence of interfering tissue found in primary tumor. Their heterogeneous characteristics are reflected in their multiple genetic abnormalities and variable responsiveness to drug treatments. In order to understand the heterogeneity observed in Asian gastric cancers, we have performed array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) on 18 Asian gastric cell lines.

CD166(pos) subpopulation from differentiated human ES and iPS cells support repair of acute lung injury.

Previous efforts to derive lung progenitor cells from human embryonic stem (hES) cells using embryoid body formation or stromal feeder cocultures had been limited by low efficiencies. Here, we report a step-wise differentiation method to drive both hES and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells toward the lung lineage. Our data demonstrated a 30% efficiency in generating lung epithelial cells (LECs) that expresses various distal lung markers.

Selective removal of undifferentiated human embryonic stem cells using magnetic activated cell sorting followed by a cytotoxic antibody.

One of the most pertinent concerns of using differentiated cells derived from human embryonic stem cells (hESC) is the presence of residual undifferentiated hESC, because they carry a risk of teratoma formation. A new cell-cell separation approach that eliminates teratoma-forming hESC in order to ensure safer cell therapy was developed. By combining antibodies (IgMs or IgGs) for the selective removal of undifferentiated hESC using magnetic activated cell sorting (MACS) followed by selective killing of residual hESC with the unique cytotoxic antibody mAb 84, the required purity of differentiated hESC can be achieved.

Pleiotrophin enhances clonal growth and long-term expansion of human embryonic stem cells.

To identify additional growth factors for optimizing propagation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), we mined publicly available data sets for the transcriptomes of murine and human ESCs and feeder cells, thereby generating a list of growth factors and complementary receptors. We identified the major pathways previously reported to be important, as well as several new ones. One pathway is the Pleiotrophin (PTN)-Pleiotrophin receptor (PTPRZ1) axis.

MicroRNA expression profiling during human cord blood-derived CD34 cell erythropoiesis.

Objective: MicroRNA (miRNA) expression profiling was performed on ex vivo differentiating erythroid cultures derived from human umbilical cord blood (UCB) CD34 cells and K562 cells to identify miRNAs involved in erythropoiesis.

Materials And Methods: Both cell types were subjected to growth factor cocktails stimulating erythroid differentiation and were harvested for small RNA extraction at regular intervals. miRNAs with at least a 1.