Large-Scale Expansion of Human Embryonic and Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells for Cell Therapy Applications

Successful isolation, derivation and culturing of human pluripotent stem cells, including human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and human induced pluripotent stem (hiPSCs) cells in laboratory scale has opened new horizones for cell therapy applications such as tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. However, most of the cell therapy protocols using these unique cells require large number of fully defined and well-characterized cells with uniform properties. Hence, translating these valuable findings from laboratory scale research to clinical applications would involve development of robust dynamic and scalable culture systems being capable of producing large number of uniform and well-characterized cells under fully controlled conditions. Identification and meticulous investigation of most important parameters affecting on the performance of expansion, self renewal and differentiation of human pluripotent stem cell cultures such as cell line, culture medium, culture conditions and culture system are prerequisite steps for successful culture system development, which have attracted growing attention from researchers in recent years. This review will focus on recent research advances and achievements in culture system development for human pluripotent stem cells as well as current challenges in this filed.