Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) are cells derived from somatic cells with a number of defined factors. They served an important role in cell and tissue modeling, drug screening, and may also in future regenerative therapies. The characteristics of iPSC are similar to embryonic stem cells, thus similar methods are developed to characterize and differentiate them. With years of exploration in iPSC development, Creative Biolabs is dedicated to providing several characterization services of iPSC pluripotency for customers all over the world.
Cell line Characterization and Pluripotency
To characterize the pluripotency of iPSC, a class of defined tests can be used, and usually iPSC are characterized with the criteria applied to ES cells. Due to the differences between iPSC and ES cell expression patterns, their characteristics also not exactly the same. There are a variety of features assessed by characterization, such as cell and colony morphology, the expression of surface markers and other antigens, growth rate, the expression of pluripotency marker genes, enzyme levels, methylation statuses, as well as differentiation into somatic cell types in vitro and in vivo. Besides, among numerous pluripotency markers, OCT3/4 and Nanog are considered to be archetypal pluripotent stem cell markers. Moreover, it has demonstrated that OCT3/4 and SOX2 work together via feedback loops regulating both their own transcription and other pluripotency-associated genes.
Learn more: iPSC Morphology