I-Corps: Xeno-free synthetic coatings for growth and derivation of human pluripotent stem cells

这个I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是为多能干细胞市场开发可再生的合成基质。这项技术可以为干细胞研究人员提供在基质上生长细胞的能力，并更容易复制结果，确保细胞可以安全地输送给患者。这种方法可能会产生新的治疗慢性疾病的患者，同时减少时间，政府批准的干细胞的治疗用途。由于其衍生的性质，当前的基底在批次之间变化，但是所提出的技术寻求以最小的变化反复生产相同的基底，从而提供再现性。I-Corps项目的基础是开发一种合成基质和方法，这种基质和方法具有可重复性，易于使用，缩短了有效治疗的时间，并在无遗传异常和相同遗传特征的未分化状态下维持人类多能干细胞（hPSC）的衍生和长期培养。公共和私营部门对大规模生产hPSC的兴趣显着增长，因为这些细胞为再生医学带来了潜在的好处。然而，干细胞从实验室到医学应用的转化一直很慢，因为用于生长细胞的基质不是无异种的（无异种），不可重现，并且没有化学定义;这导致培养物的质量不一致。该项目的目标是解决干细胞生态系统中的这一问题。所提出的基质允许hPSC在无异种和限定的环境中以高再现性生长，从而产生可以节省时间和精力的方法。如果成功，学术干细胞研究实验室，临床实验室，生物银行，制药商和生物工程公司将确信他们正在生产无交叉污染的细胞，并准备直接用于再生医学。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of reproducible synthetic substrates for the pluripotent stem cell market. This technology may provide a stem cell researcher with the ability to grow cells on a substrate and more readily replicate the results with the assurance that the cells can be safely delivered to patients. This method may produce new treatments for chronic diseases in patients while decreasign the time to governmental approvals for the therapeutic uses of stem cells. Current substrates vary from batch to batch due to the nature of their derivation, but the proposed technology seeks to produce the same substrate over and over, with minimal variation, providing reproducibility. This reproducibility may generate treatments to help millions of individuals.This I-Corps project is based on the development of a synthetic substrate and method that is reproducible, is eady to use, reduces the time to effective treatment, and sustains the derivation and long-term culture of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) in an undifferentiated state without genetic abnormalities and equal genetic profile. The interest in the public and private sector in producing hPSCs at a large scale has grown significantly due to the potential benefits that these cells bring to regenerative medicine. However, stem cell translation from the laboratory to medical applications has been slow because the substrates used for growing the cells are not xenogenic-free (xeno-free), not reproducible, and not chemically defined; This results in cultures with non-consistent quality. The goal of this project is to resolve this problem in the stem cell ecosystem. The proposed substrate allows the growth of hPSCs in a xeno-free and defined environment with high reproducibility resulting in methods which may save time and effort. If succesasful, academic stem cell research labs, clinical labs, bio-banks, pharmaceutical manufacturerers, and bioengineering companies will be certain that they are producing cells free of any cross-contamination and ready for direct use in regenerative medicine.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.