Stirred suspension bioreactors maintain naïve pluripotency of human pluripotent stem cells.

Due to their ability to standardize key physiological parameters, stirred suspension bioreactors can potentially scale the production of quality-controlled pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) for cell therapy application. Because of differences in bioreactor expansion efficiency between mouse (m) and human (h) PSCs, we investigated if conversion of hPSCs, from the conventional "primed" pluripotent state towards the "naïve" state prevalent in mPSCs, could be used to enhance hPSC production. Through transcriptomic enrichment of mechano-sensing signaling, the expression of epigenetic regulators, metabolomics, and cell-surface protein marker analyses, we show that the stirred suspension bioreactor environment helps maintain a naïve-like pluripotent state.

Cell-Biological Requirements for the Generation of Dentate Gyrus Granule Neurons.

The dentate gyrus (DG) receives highly processed information from the associative cortices functionally integrated in the trisynaptic hippocampal circuit, which contributes to the formation of new episodic memories and the spontaneous exploration of novel environments. Remarkably, the DG is the only brain region currently known to have high rates of neurogenesis in adults (Andersen et al., 1966, 1971).

Concise Review: Molecular Cytogenetics and Quality Control: Clinical Guardians for Pluripotent Stem Cells.

Now that induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-based transplants have been performed in humans and organizations have begun producing clinical-grade iPSCs, it is imperative that strict quality control standards are agreed upon. This is essential as both ESCs and iPSCs have been shown to accumulate genomic aberrations during long-term culturing. These aberrations can include copy number variations, trisomy, amplifications of chromosomal regions, deletions of chromosomal regions, loss of heterozygosity, and epigenetic abnormalities.