Improving efficiency of human pluripotent stem cell differentiation platforms using an integrated experimental and computational approach

Abstract

Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) have an unparalleled potential for tissue engineering applications including regenerative therapies and in vitro cell-based models for studying normal and diseased tissue morphogenesis, or drug and toxicological screens. While numerous hPSC differentiation methods have been developed to generate various somatic cell types, the potential of hPSC-based technologies is hinged on the ability to translate these established lab-scale differentiation systems to large-scale processes to meet the industrial and clinical demands for these somatic cell types. Here, we demonstrate a strategy for investigating the efficiency and scalability of hPSC differentiation platforms. Using two previously reported epithelial differentiation systems as models, we fit an ODE-based kinetic model to data representing dynamics of various cell subpopulations present in our culture. This fit was performed by estimating rate constants of each cell subpopulation's cell fate decisions (self-renewal, differentiation, death). Sensitivity analyses on predicted rate constants indicated which cell fate decisions had the greatest impact on overall epithelial cell yield in each differentiation process. In addition, we found that the final cell yield was limited by the self-renewal rate of either the progenitor state or the final differentiated state, depending on the differentiation protocol. Also, the relative impact of these cell fate decision rates was highly dependent on the maximum capacity of the cell culture system. Overall, we outline a novel approach for quantitative analysis of established laboratory-scale hPSC differentiation systems and this approach may ease development to produce large quantities of cells for tissue engineering applications.