Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) typically take between 9 and 15 days to differentiate into vascular endothelial cells. At their most productive, only about 60% actually differentiate. A new method reduces that time to only five days, delivers 99% differentiation, and, according to the researchers, is easy and scalable.

This two-stage approach was developed by Sean Palecek, PhD, and Eric Shusta, PhD, both professors of chemical and biological engineering, and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It focuses on overexpressing ETV2, a transcription factor to reprogram the hPSCs to endothelial cells. Then, they expand the inducible ETV2 (iETV2) endothelial cells in an endothelial medium… Continue reading.