(486d) Engineered Microenvironment for Manufacturing Human Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells

Vascular
smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) are critical in the development, function, and
maintenance of blood vessels Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) are critical
in the development, function, and maintenance of blood vessels. Human
pluripotent stem cell-derived vascular smooth muscle cells (hPSC-VSMCs) are of
great value for disease modeling, drug screening, cell therapies, and tissue
engineering. However, producing a high quantity of hPSC-VSMCs with current cell
culture technologies remains very challenging. Here, we report a scalable
method for manufacturing hPSC-VSMCs in alginate hydrogel microtubes (AlgTubes),
which protect cells from hydrodynamic stresses and limit cell mass to <400mm
to ensure efficient mass transport. The tubes provide cells a friendly
microenvironment, leading to extremely high culture efficiency. We have shown
that hPSC-VSMCs can be generated in 10 days with high viability, high purity, and
high yield(¡«5.0x10⁸cells/mL).
Phenotype and gene expression showed that VSMCs made in AlgTubes and VSMCs made
in 2D cultures were similar overall. However, AlgTube-VSMCs had higher expression
of genes related to vasculature development and angiogenesis, and 2D-VSMCs had
higher expression of genes related to cell death and biosynthetic processes.
(Published in Stem cell reports. 2019 Jan 8;12(1):84-97.)