Small molecules are routinely used to manipulate signaling pathways during the in vitro culture of cells. Signaling pathways that control cell proliferation and differentiation are important targets for small molecules in the culture of stem cells. Targeting pathways such as the canonical Wnt, transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) and retinoic acid signaling pathways can be useful to enhance and...

Generation of human cardiomyocytes from cells derived from various sources, including skin biopsy, has been made possible by breakthrough advances in stem cell research. However, it is attractive to build up a negligibly invasive way to create induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. In this study, we created iPS cells from human urine-derived epithelial cells by gene transduction using lentiviral...

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are being exploited in regenerative medicine due to their tri-lineage differentiation and immunomodulation activity. Currently, there are two major challenges when directing the differentiation of MSCs for therapeutic applications. First, chemical and growth factor strategies to direct osteogenesis in vivo lack specificity for targeted delivery with desired effects...

Human endometrium contains mesenchymal stem cells (eMSC) which have the ability to differentiate into three cell lineages and the potential in therapeutic applications. We hypothesize that using environmental induction in culture media such as dexamethasone, human recombinant insulin and human epidermal growth factor (hEGF) can differentiate endometrial stem cells into myoblast. These agents ha...

Human endometrium contains mesenchymal stem cells (eMSC) which have the ability to differentiate into three cell lineages and the potential in therapeutic applications. We hypothesize that using environmental induction in culture media such as dexamethasone, human recombinant insulin and human epidermal growth factor (hEGF) can differentiate endometrial stem cells into myoblast. These agents ha...

Human embryonic stem (ES) cells are pluripotent cells derived from the inner cell mass of in vitro fertilized human blastocysts. We examined the potential of eight growth factors [basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), transforming growth factor beta1 (TGF-beta1), activin-A, bone morphogenic protein 4 (BMP-4), hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), epidermal growth factor (EGF), beta nerve growth fact...

Human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell-derived intestinal organoids have low invasiveness; however, the current differentiation method does not reflect crypt-villus-like structure due to structural immaturity. Here, we generated budding-like that formed epithelial tissue-like structures and had characteristics of mature small intestine from human iPS cells. They showed a high expression drug...

Transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta) signaling has diverse and complex roles in various biological phenomena such as cell growth, differentiation, embryogenesis and morphogenesis. ES cells provide an essential model for understanding the role of TGF-beta signaling in lineage specification and differentiation. Recent studies have suggested significant role of TGF-beta in stem/progenitor ce...

background: niche cells, regulating spermatogonial stem cells (sscs) fate are believed to have a reciprocal communication with sscs. the present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of ssc elimination on the gene expression of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (gdnf), fibroblast growth factor 2 (fgf2) and kit ligand (kitlg), which are the main growth factors regulating sscs deve...

Dissection of cardiomyocyte differentiation process at the cellular level is indispensable in the research for cardiac development and regeneration. Previously, we have established an embryonic stem cell differentiation system that reproduces early vascular development from progenitor cells that express Flk1, a vascular endothelial growth factor receptor, by the combinatory application of 2-dim...