Abstract

Multidisciplinary Academia-Industry Collaboration For Production Of Human Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Functional Cells In Industrial Application

Norio Nakatsuji, , Kyoto University

Pluripotent stem cells, including embryonic stem (ES) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, have unique important abilities: they are able to replicate without limit and differentiate into almost all cell types. R&D for various types of application of pluripotent stem cells are underway in the fields of drug discovery, drug safety assays and regenerative medicine. In such applications, however, there are still major challenges we need to make progress and solve before practical cell usages. One is large-scale cell production at lower costs. It is very important to develop reliable and sustainable technologies for large-scale and high-quality cell production system. Our research group has been carrying out various aspects of basic and application research using human ES and iPS cells. Recently, we are leading a government-supported project for medical and pharmaceutical application of stem cells, which is carried out by collaboration with many high-technology companies and several academic research groups. We have advanced novel technologies for large-scale production of high-quality human pluripotent stem cells using 3D-culture system (Otsuji et al. 2014 Stem Cell Reports 2: 734-745). We are also working on control of stem cells with chemical compounds for growth and differentiation of ES/iPS cells. So far, we have identified novel small molecules which can induce efficient and robust cardiomyocyte differentiation from many human ES and iPS cell lines in completely defined and xeno-free conditions (Minami et al. 2012 Cell Reports 2: 1448–1460).