Following a recent peer-reviewed publication describing massive hiPSC expansion in 10L bioreactors with the C-Stem™ technology, Maxime Feyeux, PhD, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of TreeFrog Therapeutics, provides insights into iPS differentiation in C-Stem™.
Transcript:
We have another question which is very logical when you think about pluripotent stem cells: Can you differentiate the cells in C-Stem™ into any cell type ?
So my answer would be: we do. We’ve been differentiating liver cells – so the endoderm – in the capsule, we’ve been differentiating hematopoietic stem cells, NK cells from iPSCs in the capsule – so that would be the mesoderm, and we’ve also differentiated our main program – a Parkinson’s disease cell therapeutic – which is neural cells in the capsule which would make ectoderm too. So we have the three germ layers, and there is an argument to be made as to why starting from an epiblast-like structure is actually a good idea for differentiation because all the cells have equally access to the medium so they will all react synchronously to the triggers of the medium and differentiation protocols are basically preying on the signals that you put in the medium to differentiate. So we’ve got very good homogeneity there. And the second thing is that helps scaling it up because then you have this compartmentalized epiblasts everywhere in the bioreactor. You change your medium. Everyone gets equally and at the same time the signals and that helps with having something very reproducible and robust to differentiate your cells.