Chemically defined and xeno-free culture condition for human extended pluripotent stem cells
Bei Liu, Shi Chen, Yaxing Xu, Yulin Lyu, Jinlin Wang, Yuanyuan Du, Yongcheng Sun, Heming Liu, Haoying Zhou, Weifeng Lai, Anqi Xue, Minghao Yin, Cheng Li, Yun Bai, Jun Xu, Hongkui Deng
Abstract
Extended pluripotent stem (EPS) cells have shown great applicative potentials in generating synthetic embryos, directed differentiation and disease modeling. However, the lack of a xeno-free culture condition has significantly limited their applications. Here, we report a chemically defined and xeno-free culture system for culturing and deriving human EPS cells in vitro. Xeno-free human EPS cells can be long-term and genetically stably maintained in vitro, as well as preserve their embryonic and extraembryonic developmental potentials. Furthermore, the xeno-free culturing system also permits efficient derivation of human EPS cells from human fibroblast through reprogramming. Our study could have broad utility in future applications of human EPS cells in biomedicine.