With StemCultures products you can trust that your process will be set up to achieve high quality results with significant savings in media usage and labor. This allows for optimal stem cell product manufacturing efficiency.
The stem cell research that brought the Prize to John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka is a little more than a decade old. Yet in a relatively short time, the achievable therapies excite researchers and clinicians alike as they contemplate stem cell use to treat patients with cancer, blood disorders, childhood leukemia, diabetes, neuromuscular challenges, tissue replacement therapies, and more.
Today, StemCultures provides an answer to one of the greatest challenges of stem cell culture. How does the clinician manage control over the various fluctuations in stem growth factors with stem cell culture?
Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can be reprogrammed from human adult cells including those found in tissues of the brain, bone or blood marrow, the liver, muscles of the skeleton, and the skin. Because of this, stem cells can be applied as personalized regenerative medicine techniques by taking an individual’s cells, reprogramming them into stem cells, and then injecting the stem cells back into the individual. This concept is becoming widely accepted and has encouraged more research facilities to take on in-house stem cell culture work.
StemCultures has been partnered with a first-mover CORE facility, NeuraCell, which specializes in the thawing, freezing, cutting, banking, and distribution of iPSCs. This gives NeuraCell a very conceptual understanding of the nuances of iPSC culture. Whether your facility is focused on straightforward stem cell product manufacturing utilizing minimal labor and cultural promotion, is a core facility where the growth of differentiated lines or downstream differentiations require clear protocols for best practices, or is an academic milieu where you are teaching students the basics of stem cell culture, the general practices for iPSC culture remains the same and should be understood by all parties involved. StemCultures can help clarify why you might be having difficulties growing certain lines.
Each human stem cell has the ability to divide into two additional identical cells through the process of mitosis, and each can also be prodded into specialized cell differentiation. So, any stem cell research considers which stem cells are most commonly used and the environments in which they are grown or enhanced.
One of the first types of stem cells was found in embryos. Embryos offer the strongest stem cells, located in the inner cell mass of the blastocyst. While the outer cell mass will become placental tissue, the innermost cells will differentiate into any and all aspects of the human body. The ability to push those innermost cells into differentiation is identified as pluripotency. However, there are many ethical issues that arise from the use of embryonic stem cells, so the use of this cell type has been discouraged.
Next the focus shifted to adult stem cells, which, by the time they are matured, have aged far beyond that ability and have become limited. For example, the bone marrow of an adult can produce only blood cells. When these cells divide, they only create a replica of their parent cell.
However, there are new culturing practices that eliminate the need for embryonic stem cells which involve stem cells that undergo induced pluripotency. This was the focus of the work done by Gurdon and Yamanaka, referencing the ability to take a limited stem cell and prod it into further differentiation. Such cells are commonly called iPSCs and are the most readily available and adaptable stem cells in the clinical researcher’s toolbox. The work of the iPSCs expanded the overall therapeutic value of stem cells to include drug screening, wound resolution, regenerative therapies, and more. The transition from adult cells to induced pluripotent stem cells is achieved through the induction of differentiation by adding the appropriate growth factors into the culture. A successful transition can be identified by embryonic gene markers that would now be found in the adult cell. The four markers that can be stained are Oct4, Sox2, lin28, and Nanog. It is even possible to identify and begin to correct genome mutation by identifying the presence of these markers.
The issue unique to iPSCs is the specificity of the cell culture environment as it is coaxed into growth. The iPSC culture is grown and bulked up before it is differentiated, and care of stem cell culture conditions must be considered throughout the entire culture growth period.
One of the most significant challenges in the research lab is the inability to stabilize daily conditions for the growing culture. In fact, in an academic stem cell research lab, the instructor must instill in his students the need to keep conditions stable—to leave the recipe alone while it cooks. However, because of short protein half-lives, it is impossible for stem cell research managers to ensure daily conditions remain constant. Even if the student is instructed to feed and replace cell culture medium daily, important nutrients in the media begin degrading as soon as they are added. This creates large fluctuations in the culture conditions over time.
The stem cell research manager must be prepared to monitor the effects of any additives produced within the culture. StemCultures takes the researcher by the hand by offering an array of products designed for optimal culture achievement. StemCultures products prevent growth factor nutrients in stem cell media from degrading over time. This allows culture conditions to remain constant at the specific levels required for optimal iPSC growth.
The use of FGF2 DISCs comprising compatible hydrogels will preserve the integrity of the culture by stabilizing growth factor levels and thus reduces the fluctuations in culture conditions. There are also StemBeads, a product manufactured to standard, coming in a variety of supplements. FGF2 StemBeads and DISCs can be used to maintain iPSCs (by using FGF2 varieties) or they can be directed into a desired cell type’s differentiation depending on what other growth factors you use. Your consultations with StemCultures staff will guide you in the best determined way.
