GSE159672
Recapitulative hematopoietic development of human pluripotent stem cells in the absence of exogenous cytokines
We tested whether the sustained hematopoietic differentiation of hPSCs can be achieved in defined cell culture conditions without addition of hematopoietic cytokines. Here we show that the endogenous stimuli were sufficient to induce a robust generation of clonogenic hematopoietic progenitors, maturation of blood cells, emergence of the definitive cell lineages, and progenitors that were phenotypically identical to early human embryonic hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). Our novel cytokine-free protocol is efficient, reproducible, and can be applied for hematopoietic differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) and embryonic stem cells (hESCs). The removal of cytokines from the differentiation led to detecting a vast developmental potential of the early human blood cells. We also found that the cytokine-free hematopoietic differentiation of hPSCs is associated with strong activation of hPSC-derived inflammatory cells. The spectrum of recapitulative features of the novel protocol makes the cytokine-free differentiation a preferred model for studying early human hematopoietic development Overall design: Examination of gene expression during hematopoietic differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells