hPSC-Derived Neural Cell Research

Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), including human embryonic stem (ES) cells and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are self-renewing cells with the potential to develop into cells of all three germ layers. See MorehPSCs are a valuable tool for researchers aiming to model human neurological development and disease. Generating iPS cells from patient samples provides the opportunity to obtain disease-specific neural stem cells, neurons, and glia.

The first step in your hPSC-to-neural workflow is neural induction of hPSCs to generate central nervous system neural progenitor cells (NPCs). To achieve reproducible and efficient neural induction, use the defined and serum-free STEMdiff™ SMADi Neural Induction Kit that mimics the in vivo neural developmental pathway. This kit is compatible with both embryoid body and monolayer neural induction protocols. The embryoid body protocol uses AggreWell™800 plates to form uniform neural aggregates, which, when replated are characterized by the presence of morphologically distinct neural rosette clusters that can be isolated for further experiments using STEMdiff™ Neural Rosette Selection Reagent.

Researchers performing neural induction can also generate neural crest cells (NCCs) to study a variety of pathologies and downstream mesenchymal cell types, or to differentiate peripheral nervous system cell types, including sensory neurons and Schwann cells. If hPSC-derived NCCs are your progenitor cell type of interest, you can obtain a highly pure population from hPSCs using the STEMdiff™ Neural Crest Differentiation Kit.

You can also generate organoids containing various differentiated neural cell types arranged in a 3D tissue structure from hPSCs. STEMdiff™ neural organoid kits enabling developmental self-organization or patterning to particular nervous system subregions are powerful tools to study human developmental processes and complex cell interactions.