Role of STAT3 in Human Esophageal Epithelial Development

The transcription factor STAT3 plays broad roles in epithelial biology, yet its function in human esophageal development remains undefined. Using 2D and 3D human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived platforms, we investigated how STAT3 regulates esophageal epithelial differentiation. Overall design: We established CRISPR/Cas9-engineered STAT3-knockout (KO) hiPSCs (BU3 NGST). These cells, along with control hiPSCs, were differentiated into esophageal epithelial progenitor cells (EPCs) using a previously reported protocol (Zhang et al., Cell Stem Cell, 2018). After 16 days on the differentiation protocol, the resulting human EPCs were harvested, and total RNA was extracted. The RNA samples were submitted to Azenta for RNA sequencing.