Identification of miRNA signatures during the differentiation of hESCs into retinal pigment epithelial cells.

Retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells can be obtained through in vitro differentiation of both embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). We have previously identified 87 signature genes relevant to RPE cell differentiation and function through transcriptome analysis of both human ESC- and iPSC-derived RPE as well as normal fetal RPE. Here, we profile miRNA expression through small RNA-seq in human ESCs and their RPE derivatives.

DNA repair in human pluripotent stem cells is distinct from that in non-pluripotent human cells.

The potential for human disease treatment using human pluripotent stem cells, including embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), also carries the risk of added genomic instability. Genomic instability is most often linked to DNA repair deficiencies, which indicates that screening/characterization of possible repair deficiencies in pluripotent human stem cells should be a necessary step prior to their clinical and research use. In this study, a comparison of DNA repair pathways in pluripotent cells, as compared to those in non-pluripotent cells, demonstrated that DNA repair capacities of pluripotent cell lines were more heterogeneous than those of differentiated lines examined and were generally greater.

A DNMT3B alternatively spliced exon and encoded peptide are novel biomarkers of human pluripotent stem cells.

A major obstacle in human stem cell research is the limited number of reagents capable of distinguishing pluripotent stem cells from partially differentiated or incompletely reprogrammed derivatives. Although human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) express numerous alternatively spliced transcripts, little attention has been directed at developing splice variant-encoded protein isoforms as reagents for stem cell research. In this study, several genes encoding proteins involved in important signaling pathways were screened to detect alternatively spliced transcripts that exhibited differential expression in pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) relative to spontaneously differentiated cells (SDCs).

Astrocytes derived from trisomic human embryonic stem cells express markers of astrocytic cancer cells and premalignant stem-like progenitors.

Background: Trisomic variants of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) arise spontaneously in culture. Although trisomic hESCs share many properties with diploid hESCs, they also exhibit features of cancer stem cells. Since most hESC-based therapies will utilize differentiated derivatives, it is imperative to investigate the potential of trisomic hESCs to undergo malignant transformation during differentiation prior to their use in the clinical setting.