BIOINSPIRED 3D SCAFFOLD FOR INDUCING DIFFERENTIATION OF EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are able to differentiate into any type of cell in the body. Their lineage differentiation, however, depends upon environmental cues presented to them through tissue niches. In the past decades, much work has been focused on the use of cocktails of various soluble signaling molecules. These strategies have yielded great successes in producing many important cell lineages from ESCs in vitro. Nonetheless, the use of these strategies for generating cells that are suitable for cell replacement therapy remains largely unsettled. In many cases, cells differentiated from ESCs using these strategies are immature, suggesting that the use of soluble signaling molecules alone is insufficient to assemble or mimic in vivo tissue niches. Studies on embryonic development biology strongly suggest that ESCs interact with various physicochemical cues in their surrounding microenvironments during embryo development. We reported here that ESC differentiation in three-dimensional (3D) environment can enhance the functional pancreatic β-cell generation from ESCs. We demonstrated that more mature-like insulin-producing cells could be generated from ESCs in the 3D cultures.A potential signaling pathway involved in the augmentation of a 3D culture system was discussed as well. This work demonstrated an achievability of producing mature β-cells from ESCs in a 3D scaffold environment.