Hepatic differentiation in human na�ve stem cells compared to human embryonic stem cells

Abstract

With the potential of using stem cells to provide a large source of hepatocytes for liver modeling or cell therapy, human na�ve stem cells are becoming the topic of many studies. Past studies have divided stem cells to two states: na�ve and primed. Since the stem cells in mice are pluripotent and considered less advanced in the differentiation process, they are considered in the na�ve state. On the other hand, human embryonic stem cells show characteristics of being in the primed state. Thus, studies have reprogrammed human embryonic stem cells into a na�ve state to reflect the mouse embryonic stem cell-like characteristics. In our study, we induced hepatic differentiation in both human embryonic stem cells and human na�ve stem cells to compare their yield of hepatocyte-like cell. Because of the mouse embryonic stem cell-like characteristics, we hypothesized that the human na�ve stem cells would efficiently differentiate to hepatocyte-like cells compared to human embryonic stem cells. A modified standard protocol was used to differentiate the cells and the resulting cells were checked for hepatic characteristics. The results of this study showed that there were no significant differences in the yield of hepatocyte-like cells. However, the differentiated human embryonic stem cells had a tendency to be slightly more mature than the differentiated human na�ve stem cells. Further studies are needed to explore the cause for this and to optimize hepatic differentiation in both cell types.