Important Progress in Generation of Hematopoietic Stem/Progenitor Cells in vitro

Recently, Pan Guangjin's research team in the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences reported important progress in generation of multi-potent hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) in vitro. These new results was published online on 1st December in the Cell Discovery, titled "Characterization and generation of human definitive multipotent hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells".

Hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell (HSPCs) transplantation has played a huge role in the treatment of various blood diseases. However, the source of hematopoietic stem cells is quite limited and mainly relies on bone marrow donation. Therefore, in the past two decades, scientists have made a lot efforts to generate HSPCs in dish from human PSCs, but still lack key breakthroughs.

Pan’s group firstly developed a monolayer and defined condition to differentiate HSPCs from hPSCs in dish. Then, though single-cell transcriptome analysis, they identified and enriched multi-potent HSPCs in the differentiation. These HSPCs generated in dish can differentiate into almost all lineages of blood cells such as red blood cells, white blood cells, megakaryocytes, T cells, and NK cells, etc. More strikingly, they can also differentiate various human blood lineages after transplantation, including the important immune cells such as NK cells and B lymphocytes. In addition, they also reported the key characteristics of primitive hematopoiesis and definitive hematopoiesis in the early stage of human development.

This research achievement provides a prospect for understanding human early hematopoiesis and a firm basis to generate blood and immune cells for clinical purposes. The research was supported by the National Key R&D Programme, the Strategic Priority Research Programme of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Guangdong Provincial Department of Science and Technology.

Contact:
Guangjin Pan, Ph.D., Principal Investigator
Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences
E-mail: pan_guangjin@gibh.ac.cn

Important Progress in Generation of Hematopoietic Stem/Progenitor Cells in vitro