title: Integrated processes for expansion and differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells in suspended microcarriers cultures.
abstract: Current methods for human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC) expansion and differentiation can be limited in scalability and costly (due to their labor intensive nature). This can limit their use in cell therapy, drug screening and toxicity assays. One of the approaches that can overcome these limitations is microcarrier (MC) based cultures in which cells are expanded as cell/MC aggregates and then directly differentiated as embryoid bodies (EBs) in the same agitated reactor. This integrated process can be scaled up and eliminate the need for some culture manipulation used in common monolayer and EBs cultures. This review describes the principles of such microcarriers based integrated hPSC expansion and differentiation process, and parameters that can affect its efficiency (such as MC type and extracellular matrix proteins coatings, cell/MC aggregates size, and agitation). Finally examples of integrated process for generation cardiomyocytes (CM) and neural progenitor cells (NPC) as well as challenges to be solved are described.
authors.affiliation: Stem Cell Group, Bioprocessing Technology Institute, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore. Electronic address: alan_lam@bti.a-star.edu.sg.
authors.forename: Alan Tin-Lun
authors.initials: AT
authors.lastname: Lam
authors.affiliation: Stem Cell Group, Bioprocessing Technology Institute, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore.
authors.forename: Allen Kuan-Liang
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Stem Cell Group, Bioprocessing Technology Institute, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore.
authors.forename: Sherwin Qi-Peng
authors.initials: SQ
authors.lastname: Ting
authors.affiliation: Stem Cell Group, Bioprocessing Technology Institute, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore.
authors.forename: Shaul
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Reuveny
authors.affiliation: Stem Cell Group, Bioprocessing Technology Institute, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore. Electronic address: steve_oh@bti.a-star.edu.sg.
authors.forename: Steve Kah-Weng
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Oh
mesh_terms: D018929:Cell Culture Techniques; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D049109:Cell Proliferation; D064987:Cell- and Tissue-Based Therapy / Q000379:methods; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D053595:Embryonic Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D006801:Humans; D032383:Myocytes, Cardiac / Q000166:cytology; D009474:Neurons / Q000378:metabolism*; D039904:Pluripotent Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D013234:Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology
keywords: Extracellular matrix proteins; Human embryonic stem cells; Human induced pluripotent stem cells; Human pluripotent stem cells; Integration of expansion and differentiation; Microcarriers