Different propensity in hematopoietic differentiation potential among distinct human pluripotent stem cell lines

Lineage-specific differentiation potential varies among different human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) lines. A stem cell bank may advice researchers on which hPSCs exhibit the highest differentiation potential for a certain lineage. In this study, we aimed at characterizing the hematopoietic differentiation potential from 14 hESC/iPSC lines through the embryoid body (hEB) differentiation system. We carried out gene expression profiling on six different hESC lines grouped according to their ability to differentiate towards hematopoietic lineage: SHEF1, AND1 and H1 were considered as good (high CD45 expression and high CFU potential), whereas H9, HS181 and VAL3 were selected as poor-blood differentiating lines (low CD45 expression and low CFU potential). Human ESC samples were collected during the exponential cell growth phase and stabilized in RNA later. 500 ng of each total RNA sample was labelled with Cy3 using the Quick-Amp Labelling kit and hybridized with the Gene Expression Hybridization kit to a Whole Human Genome Oligo Microarray (Agilent Technologies) following the Manufacturer’s instructions. Each cell line was analyzed as independent duplicates. H9 hESC line was used as the baseline.