Differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells into functional cells

Introduction Generation of functional cells from human pluripotent stem cells is the key for their application. Here, we review representative differentiation protocols of human pluripotent stem cells into neural and cardiac lineages. These protocols can be divided into three groups: embryoid body formation, monolayer culture and coculture with stromal cells. The former two are the mainstream methods, while coculture is seldom used now. We also discuss further improvements needed to be achieved. Conclusion We summarised the main differentiation protocols of human pluripotent stem cells into neural and cardiac lineages. However, some general problems exist for the current differentiation system and need to be solved in the future. Introduction Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are derived from inner cell mass of preimplantation embryos1,2 and can generate more than 200 cell types of the three embryonic germ layers while maintain the ability of selfrenew. In 1998, Thomson et al. successfully established ESC lines from human embryos3, lighting the enthusiasm of regenerative medicine. The invention of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology by Differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells into