Co-growth of Stem Cells With Target Tissue Culture as an Easy and Effective Method of Directed Differentiation.

The long-term co-culture of mouse embryonic stem cells (mESC) with rat endothelial cells (EC) was tested for contact differentiation into the endothelial lineage. Serial passaging of rat ECs mixed with mESC in ratio 10:1 resulted in the emergence of a homogeneous cell population expressing mouse endothelial surface markers CD102, CD29, CD31. Rat endothelial surface marker RECA-1 completely disappeared from the co-cultured population after 2 months of weekly passaging.