A defined, feeder-free, serum-free system to generate in vitro hematopoietic progenitors and differentiated blood cells from hESCs and hiPSCs.

Human ESC and iPSC are an attractive source of cells of high quantity and purity to be used to elucidate early human development processes, for drug discovery, and in clinical cell therapy applications. To efficiently differentiate pluripotent cells into a pure population of hematopoietic progenitors we have developed a new 2-dimensional, defined and highly efficient protocol that avoids the use of feeder cells, serum or embryoid body formation. Here we showed that a single matrix protein in combination with growth factors and a hypoxic environment is sufficient to generate from pluripotent cells hematopoietic progenitors capable of differentiating further in mature cell types of different lineages of the blood system. We tested the differentiation method using hESCs and 9 iPSC lines generated from different tissues. These data indicate the robustness of the protocol providing a valuable tool for the generation of clinical-grade hematopoietic cells from pluripotent cells.