Development of Enabling Suspension Culture & Drug Screening Technologies

人类胚胎干细胞(HESCs)是一种非常有希望的分化细胞来源，可用于 未来用于治疗糖尿病、帕金森氏症和其他疾病的革命性药物。人类胚胎干细胞一直是 研究有些困难，因为支持他们在文化中成长的条件非常原始。我们 已经开发出一种简单有效的培养hESCs的方法，这为交替培养hESCs打开了可能性 强大的细胞培养方法，这可能会加快这些临床应用的进展。 该应用程序的目标是为人类可持续发展开发关键的新使能技术。我们有 建立了一种新的、简单的培养和分化hESCs的培养基体系。我们的方法 支持大规模扩增未分化的细胞、维持悬浮状态的胚胎干细胞和 常规微量hESC培养，用于高通量筛选方法。具体目标是 探讨在悬液中保持未分化的hESCs并引导其分化的优势 在高密度悬浮培养中向内胚层和其他谱系转移。将采用简化的协议 一个完全可控的生物反应器系统，并进行了优化。其他目标是筛选已知的化合物或 HESCs的海洋天然产品资料库，以确定影响自我更新的新活动， 分化或凋亡。特别是，我们将通过以下方式筛选导致hESCs不同的化合物 影响激活素/节点、GSKSp或PIS激酶信号。我们的方法非常独特，并具有 极大地简化hESC来源的可移植细胞未来的细胞治疗应用的潜力。

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are a highly promising source of differentiated cells that may be used in the future for revolutionary treatments of diabetes, Parkinson's and other diseases. hESCs have been somewhat difficult to study, because conditions that support their growth in culture were farily primitive. We have developed a simple and efficient way to culture hESCs, which opens the possibility of alternate and powerful cell culture methodologies, which may speed the progress of these clinical applications. The ojectives of the application are to develop key new enabling technologies for hESCs. We have established a new and simple defined media system for culturing and differentiating hESCs. Our approach supported the massive expansion of undifferenitiated cells, the maintenance of hESCs in suspension and the routine minaturization of hESC culture for high throughtput sceening approaches. The specific aims are to investigate the advantages of maintaining undifferenitated hESCs in suspension, and directing differentiation to endodermal and other lineages in high-density suspension culture. Streamlined protocols will be adapted to a fully-controlable bioreactor system and optimised. Other aims are to screen known compounds or libaries of marine natural products in hESCs to identify novel activities that impact self-renewal, differentiation or apoptosis. In particular, we will screen for compunds that induce differenitation in hESCs by impacting Activin/nodal, GSKSp or PIS Kinase signaling. Our approaches are highly unique and have the potential to greatly simplify future cell therapy applications of hESC-derived transplantable cells.