Stem cell research: Creating blood for high throughput screening

Currently, differentiation of either human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) relies on the use of serum or co-culturing on feeder cell lines. Manual maintenance and differentiation of hESCs or iPSCs is technically challenging, labor-intensive and subject to inherent process variability, and is therefore not a viable long-term solution for scaling up the production of stem cells. 

Cellular Dynamics International has developed an automated method to produce industrial quantities of stem cells, and their derivatives, to address the needs of the market. This application note describes a highly efficient, serum-free, feeder-free automated system for production of iPSCs, and their differentiation into hematopoietic precursor cells (HPCs).