Highly efficient neural differentiation of human ES cells on the feeder of differentiating NPC cells

Abstract

Human Embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and induced Pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can give as a powerful source for cell therapy to treat several degenerative disease such as Parkinson’s disease. Human neural precursor cells (hNPCs) derived from hESCs/iPSCs are major leading development of brain. It can be differentiated into neuronal population including astrocytes and oligodendrocytes. Many studies introduced the method for hESCs/iPSCs differentiation into NPCs. However, the efficiency depends on conditions as passage number of cells, hESCs/iPSCs line or specific RNA levels. Furthermore, cell transplantation surgery has effects forming teratoma using undifferentiated hESCs/iPSCs. To solve these problems, I introduced effective hNPCs differentiation method using hNPCs feeder layers. To eliminate expression of undifferentiation marker such as Oct4 or nanog, bFGF-free culture conditions with undifferentiation hESC mixed hNPCs were used for differentiation. This study can serve effective neural inducing without any possibility forming teramoma after cell transplantation for cell therapy.